Brief Recap
I sprained my ankle running with my soccer team.
It turned out my ankle was broken. I had a cast and crutches.
When the lower 2/3 of my leg was colder to the touch than the upper 1/3, I went back to my doctor.
Dr. Webster cut the cast off and admitted me to the Grossmont Hospital.
I was a cast-less in-patient at Grossmont Hospital within an hour.
New stuff
It is February 1981. Much of the medical technology we now take for granted wasn’t even on the radar screen at that time.
Whenever I sat up with my legs hanging over the edge of the bed, my left leg would get cold within a minute. Looking for a cause involved ultra-sound.
 |
| Ultra-sound device from the era. |
First they spread a gel on my foot. Then, they listened to the sound of my popliteal pulse—on the medial (inside) surface between the heel and ankle. From that, they determined that I had 20% less blood flowing through that artery when the leg was cold when compared to a “warm leg” check. Warm leg means not dangling over the edge of the bed.
An Aside
My very first AP Biology class had the highest pass rate—over 90%--of any of my 30+ AP classes. That was the school year of 1980-81.
They are a wonderful group of people.
The hospital food in that era was only moderately better than the hospital food of 1968 when I had my spinal fusion. Being the kindhearted group that they are, that AP Biology class smuggled in a Godfather’s pizza. It was magnificent!
They also put up a huge piece of butcher paper at Monte Vista and collected “get well” wishes from dozens of students.
We now return to regular programming
The “best guess” reason for my cold leg was
- When I fell and crashed on my left hip on the asphalt, it jarred a part of the L5/Lumbar spinal fusion I’d had when I was 18-years-old.
- The impact shifted a piece of bone just enough to agitate a ganglion just outside the vertebrae. The result of that agitation was my condition.
I still don’t know if that was the case.
I do know that they sent me home after a week in the hospital. They decided not to put the cast back on. I spent another week at my home with the instructions to “keep off your foot.”
I did stay home.
I did stay off my foot . . .
SOME of the time.
For at least ten years after that injury, my left foot would get so cold that I had to wear a single wool sock to get to sleep at night. Winter or summer, it made no difference. The foot got so cold it felt like it was burning.
I continue to notice the difference in the perceived temperature of my feet. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does it’s always that the left foot that is the cold one.
Aside #2
Some of this condition may be genetic. My mom’s fingers are almost always cold. People I shake hands with comment on my icy grip. “Cold hand, warm heart,” is the most common comment.
My usual retort is, “Nope. Just cold hands.”
I hope you at least smiled at that.
Doctor’s have a difficult time obtaining oxygen saturation readings from the fingertip devices every time my mom goes in. Recently, I’ve had to warm my hands so they can get the readings on my fingers.
Sounds like a genetic issue to me.
Maybe whatever’s causing the finger freeze is related to my icy foot.
Next Almanac: Back to School Nights
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