Doctor Day - Thursday, June 12

Is it normal to go to the doctor 4 times while on a 3 month adventure? We have never adventured for three months before, so my scale of what is normal has no baseline to measure from, but my common sense says this is a little excessive. But, walking hundreds of miles through desert and mountains can put a strain on body parts. It appears we are not immune.

Let's tally up the score. Sally made two trips to the Poditrist in Palm Springs for her hurting foot. I made an emergency room run for, uh… the runs (and severe stomach cramps) at Arrowhead Lake and today I return to the medical world to have a very sore right foot looked at by a Podiatrist in Mammoth Lakes. Looks like the score is 2 to 2. Our quest to hike for 91 days keeps getting shortened due to these nagging doctor visits, but without them the trip would have ended back on April 24th when we exited the trail onto the Palms to Pines highway near Palm Springs with Sally's foot on fire.

We took it easy today, again, waiting for my 3:00pm appointment. We walked to the Aloha Laundry, a place we are very familiar with as we have stopped here many times in the past while traveling in our van, to do laundry. We only have half a load with our clothes combined as we have only one outfit each, so standing in my rain coat, gym shorts and sock less boots we completed the task.

It is amazing how totally dirty our clothes get. These same clothes were washed by Strider back in Independence and have only been worn riding busses and walking thru town but you would never know by looking at the water I which they are being agitated. It looks like we are washing our clothes in mud. We considered a second washing, but the rinse water was only very cloudy and it would in actuality be a third washing, so we let it be, dried them and return to our room.

We wandered town a little before seeing the doctor. We arrived early to the appointment, about 2:20 and after a very brief paperwork session the doctor retrieved us from the waiting room. After the usual question and answer period she examined my foot and pronounced the diagnosis I had been expecting, Planters Fasciitis. Dr. Cuttic was excellent. She spent lots of time discussing the anatomy of my foot, the causes, the remedies, the therapies, the exercises and HOW MUCH THE CORTISONE INJECTION WAS GOING TO HURT!

I admit it. I am a pain whimp. Put me in a dentist chair and I immediately start to sweat. They put buckets under the low points to catch the sweat running off me as I wince and contort with every pick touch and drill sound. In the doctor's office I am no better. By the time she got around to preparing the actual injection I had soaked her tissue paper covering the examining table with my sweat. I told myself I would not flinch or groan or cry out, but I did. Like a baby. She had to deliver the secret serum to a couple locations, each one a little deeper and through another layer of already aggravated tissue, so I winced and groaned through each subcutaneous penetration.

I was told not to walk on the heel for 24 hours so as not to squish the medicine out of the needed areas, so I limped out on my right toes to the bus stop. We rode the bus a block to the Rite Aid where Sally went in to fill a prescription, then rode another bus to the Motel 6. The bus driver saw me limping and drove us past the usual stop and dropped us as close as he could to our door.

Now, what next. My foot was okay, a little sore but not any worse than before. Should we rent a car for a week and drive around to keep me off my feet? We played with Priceline for an hour trying to get ridiculously cheap prices on rental cars, but to no avail. We could rent a car, but it was more than we wanted to spend, plus we would have to bus to Reno to get it and return it. We decided, after much negotiating, to ride the YARTS bus from Mammoth to Yosemite Valley on Saturday and hangout until Wednesday visiting with Eric, Sally's boss from two years ago and letting my foot heal. We will take the bus back to Tuolumne on Thursday and hike from there back to Mammoth (35 miles) as a test drive of my foot. If all goes well, we would then bus back to Independence, pick up our food resupply languishing in the post office there and hike the 130 miles from Kearsarge Pass to Mammoth, stopping at Muir Ranch and Vermillion Valley Ranch along the way. In favor of this plan are the following points. It gives the snow about two more weeks to melt. Muir Ranch opens June 22nd and will be open when we arrive for a resupply meaning I can carry less weight. We still get to spend time in Yosemite, this week rather than at the end of our trip. We accomplish our secondary goal of hiking from the Mexican Border to Tuolumne Meadows, I will admit in a rather convoluted method. So, it is a win-win. But, it all depends on how my foot heals.

Powered by trail food, supported by trail angels and pieced back together by the very competent medical community of southern and central California we might, just might complete this trip. We have 24 days left and 170 miles to go. This is fun!