Sunday, June 27, 2010

Genzu's shoe modifications worked to reduce pain...

Life is teaching me a lesson about pain.  How serious it is when someone is in constant pain, please take them seriously and try to make them comfortable.  It is mentally debilitating.  It effects my every moment.  I work hard, I play hard and I love every minute of it.  My intention is to perform my best at every moment, in every aspect of my life.  To lead by example.  Even in the best of situations, it is difficult to stay in the moment.  When pain like this is present, it makes its way to the foreground and hampers my best efforts at excellent performance.  It distracts me from my focus on performing well in the moment, and makes me just try to survive it.

I tried to take a short nap before the Argentina vs. Mexico world cup game today, and I thought about how the pain is amplified by landing on my right foot.  Really, it was the shoe constricting against the swollen toe that causes the pain.  I was in so much pain when I was at work this week, standing all day in tight fitting shoes.  I would wear sandals to work, but the new rules there technically keep me from that and I think it is unsafe to wear open toe shoes when riding a xootr anyway.  It occurred to me that regardless of how it looks, I need to relieve my pain at work so just standing there doesn't make me cringe in pain, I need to convert a pair of old Rod Laver shoes into Genzu modified Rod Lavers.  I looked up Daryl's blog and found the picture that changed my day.

Today I modified a pair of old blue Rod Laver's so the right toe is open like Daryl 'Genzu' Genz's.  It worked, an orthopedic success!  Especially since the only shoes I ever wear are Rod Laver tennis shoes.  I did a footbag demo at Taste of Chicago with Alex and Valeria, and I made it through the two hours with the microphone, and another hour kicking with the CIC guys by Buckingham Fountain.  I got some good footage and will publish a movie soon.  It was hard to set the footbag off of my right toe because of the intensity of effect caused by my toe curl, but I could figure that out if I had to.  My infection did get worse and the swelling went up, but I was able to bear it.  I hope this infection passes, because living with pain like this is unfathomable.  I can't imagine what it must be like for someone with real problems like Cancer, Diabetes or heart disease.  Ouch.

-enlightener

Shred notes: 6/27/10
Just glad to be shredding.  Infection still getting worse.  Little white dot showed up in the middle of the swollen part.  Playing on grass sucks, but when doing youth outreach, you can't be picky.  Not ideal, but probably less impact on my toe too.

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