A Very Bad Day

Some days, it would have been better to have stayed in bed. Today is one of them. I have a whole load of things to do this week, all requiring a lot of walking as I don't drive. Tomorrow I have promised to have lunch with a friend who has broken her foot. Wednesday I have to travel to Victoria to see the dentist about the tooth I broke last week. Thursday I am trekking round looking at property in North London. So, what happens? I hurt my foot!

I have a dodgy left ankle. It's been sprained badly twice, it has a damaged ligament, a fallen arch, a trapped nerve, metatarsalgia and it was also ripped open in an accident and glued and clipped back together as the cut was too jagged to stitch it. I also damaged a ligament in the foot five years ago, which was excruciating and took three months to heal.

Last week, I asked the chiropractor who treats my whiplash after-effects to take a look at it. She pressed it in some acutely painful places and it actually started to feel much better. Today she was meant to be doing some more manipulation and also giving me some acupuncture. The needles went in... and promptly came out again as I couldn't take the pain. I told her her a hated needles. 'But why did you tell me you'd been looking forward to the treatment?' she asked. 'I was dreading the actual needles, but was looking forward to feeling better afterwards,' I replied.

She cricked and cracked my back, then concentrated on my ankle, twisting it and applying sudden pressure which caused a cracking, graunching sound and a scream from me. The pain wasn't in my ankle, it was in my foot, on the left, amongst the small bones below the ankle bone and just where I'd sustained the bad cut. I tried to stand and couldn't. She said if a bone had actually snapped, it probably meant I had osteoporosis. She then tried to put a positive spin on it by saying if I had, then she'd helped me find out and it was a good thing because I'd get treated sooner. Huh!

She kept telling me not to panic and to calm down. I wasn't panicking, I was thinking of all the things I'd have to cancel, including going to see my friend with the broken foot who lives about a mile from the bus stop! She then said that what she thought had happened was that she'd cracked some old scar tissue inside the foot. She made me lie down for twenty minutes with an ice pack on it, ten minutes over the foot and ten minutes under. After that, I hobbled to M&S, who were keeping a bag full of goods that I'd tried to buy earlier but couldn't as the queues at the tills were too long and I'd be late for my chiro appointment.

I then hobbled home with instructions to use an ice-pack every two hours. I rang my friend, who said she had another friend with her who'd also damaged her foot, so had another friend, and one of her sons had just damaged a ligament in his ankle. It must be bad foot week!

Then, in hobbling, I twisted my back. I have taken one of Mr G's heavy duty painkillers and applied lots of arnica gel.

To cap it all, I've started having toothache in a tooth that's ever hurt before (not the broken one), and on switching my computer on, found an email from the mag I write a horoscope column for every month, asking if they can drop the column I've just supplied for September and use it for October instead, as a large ad has come in and taken up the space. I emailed back saying that they can't possibly use September's stars in October as I've worked out all the aspects and they only apply to September. So... no pay for the ones I slaved over last week. It's only a measly £120 but it's regular and I need it.

What a bloody horrible day! Oh, and a cheque for £220 which I paid into the bank last Monday is not showing in my account. I stuck it into that bin with the pull-down handle where you can deposit envelopes of cheques and cash. Has some long-armed orangutan been in and raided it? Hey, call myself an astrologer... I certainly didn't see all this monkey-business in the stars!