Amputation elation

My son, Charles, had half of his large toe amputated last Thursday. He was born with an extra large toe. We called it a hammer toe, but I've seen pictures of hammer toes and his didn't look like that. Let's just say it was a large toe, and I was happy to cover his shame with a shoe.

After age twenty-five, this humongous toe began growing, so that it looked like a potato attached to his foot. Sometimes, at parties, this toe came out of its sock and showed off, shocking those who had never seen it before. Once a girl named Meg, almost a perfect stranger, put the toe in her mouth to show her bravery, and she wasn't even drunk.

We act like drunks occasionally, but no one drinks.

The potato toe made Charles's right foot one and a half sizes bigger than the left foot. You see the problem. Right foot: size 12. Left foot: size 10 1/2. Awkward.

Charles didn't care about any of this until the foot began hurting. So he went to Dr VanB, my ankle surgeon, who said they could trim down the toe, in which case it might grow back, or they could amputate it. Charles took amputation, the final solution. He also had two bone spurs removed from the bottom of his foot.

Today he went back to work on crutches, but by the end of the day he carried the crutches, because "they were more annoying than the foot."

In a couple of weeks, he'll buy a new wardrobe of shoes, size 10 1/2. He's been anticipating this.

When he was born, he was so perfect looking and he smiled at me right away as if we had known each other forever, but he got an 8 out of 10 on the APGAR scale which ruffled my plumage, let me tell you. "It's the toe," Dr. Maeder said.

Toe or no toe, Charles has always been a 10 in my book.