My Greatest Fear Realized

Most of you know my feelings of absolute horror when it comes to feet. I hate 'em! I realize I need them to walk. I realize everyone else does too, but I hate them, nonetheless. Particularly if I have to touch them or if they ever wind up near my face. I HATE commercials where they show cartoon fungi nestling under people's toenails. There's even one that depicts a foot with a face on it, bursting into flames from the agony of athlete's foot. *shudder* Who thought up that piece of advertising genius?

I can certainly keep it together if I see someone in flip flops. I wear flip flops, myself. I touch my own feet. But if anyone's feet touch me, or if I have to touch someone elses' feet, I get pretty grossed out. The nastiest scenario is someone else's feet touching my own. If Wayne tries to play footsie with me, he is summarily rejected. Sorry, Babe. Ain't gonna happen... Not today. Not ever.

So I've been pretty pleased with my decision to go into dentistry. That's about as far away from feet as you can get. No problem, right?

Wrong!

A ten year old little girl came into the clinic the other day with a bone disease of unknown origin. Her x-rays showed she had absolutely no enamel formation on both her baby teeth and her permanent teeth. The teeth she had in her mouth were orange and lumpy. They looked like chewed up, half-eaten cheese. She was disproportionately built and very short for her age. She had problems with her joints, such that she was about to have knee replacements , was hard of hearing, and the whites of her eyes were blue. All of her joints were really loose. She could bend her wrists back like one of those Cirque du Soleil performers that can squeeze their entire body into a shampoo bottle.

So the Craniofacial specialist, Dr. S, and I were working her up to see if we could crack this case. The lack of enamel pointed toward one diagnosis. The blue eyeball thing pointed to another. All told, this case was weird. So Dr. S turns to me and says. "Look between her fingers." ...and I know what he's getting at, because one of the diagnoses we were grappling with is sometimes associated with webbed digits. It's called syndactyly.

So I look between her fingers, and sure enough: Webbed fingers. Not like the creature from the Black Lagoon, mind you, but up to about the 1st knuckle. So we tick that little factoid off on the list and start digging a little further. Then Dr. S turns to me and says, "Check her toes."

*Deafening silence*

"What?"

"Check her toes to see if they are also affected."

"Uuuummmmm. She has the finger thing. Why does it matter if the toes are webbed, too?"

"We need to assess everything."

"Seriously?"

Then he starts taking off her shoes. ...and I am trying not to puke, because this poor little girl is sitting there, mortified, that there are all these people staring at her and musing, "Look she has this wrong with her" and "Oh! She has that wrong with her." So I didn't think puking because I had to look at her potentially webbed feet would work any wonders for her self-esteem.

"Go ahead and look," he says nonchalantly.

So there I am (in my latex gloves, thank goodness) prying the kid's dirty little downtown digits apart and checking for w.e.b.b.e.d f.e.e.t.!!!!!! And NO she didn't have them! And NO, I never puked. And NO, we STILL don't know what she has. But maybe she has a friend in Ashton Kutcher.