Notes from Maine - 2026/08/02

I’m not sure I’ve talked about feet enough this summer.

Just before Lilly’s (the little filly’s) hernia surgery, her father, Earl (Shire Horse) had a foot issue. There was a big crack in one of his rear hooves and he had to get his first ever shoe. He would have gotten more than one shoe, but the farrier only had one enormous shoe with him that day, so with a promise to come back, we left it at that.

Earl now has two shoes. The first one was replaced and another installed. After that, we ran into more issues. Earl was fighting with his other rear foot because of some soreness that we couldn’t track down, and there wasn’t good enough side wall on the other front foot. He will get more shoes on Monday when the farrier returns again to install a plastic spacer or something. Weird. Regardless, Two-Foot Earl seems to be doing just fine. He’s out in the pasture with his family, and that’s good enough for him. Lilly has fully recovered from her surgery, so she’s good as well. 

While all that horse-foot nonsense was going on, Albert (dog) decided it was his turn. He had a big infected pad on his foot that required soaking, bandages, and antibiotics while the skin fell off and then grew back. Yuck. He’s doing much better now and has begun a reduced schedule of running around until his foot has calloused and is back to 100%. 

That brings me to Thursday night when I noticed a pain in the pad of my left foot. I glanced at it—there was a hole but not discernible splinter. I went to bed. Friday morning, it was swollen, red, and I could hardly walk. After soaking, I poked around and saw a deep hole but still saw no sign of a splinter. I made an appointment and carried on with my day.

I kept saying, “pad.” I might have even said, “I think I have a splinter in my metacarpal pad.”

The people at their clinic shook their heads.

The doctor had to inform me, “On people, we call it the ball of your foot.”

“Did you poke around?” one physician’s assistant asked.

“Oh, extensively,” I said.

They nodded. “You’re one of those,” someone said.

I am a DIY surgeon at times. 

It turns out that lidocaine, injected right into the ball of one’s foot, is very spicy. I’m normally unmoved by painful stimuli, but that injection made my eyes go wide. It felt like they were pouring hot lava directly into my foot. The trench they carved was deep, very bloody, and surprisingly jagged. Every time they found the head of the splinter, picking at it with the side of a scalpel or the end of the tweezers, my foot burned. There was never a satisfying moment when the splinter was extracted. X-Rays proved that it wasn’t metal or glass, and they warned me that excavating a splinter made of wood or straw would likely lead to it breaking apart.

I suppose it did—break apart, that is. Eventually, there was nothing more to hunt and they wrapped my foot in a thick bandage. Walking remained painful, but the pain had changed. It now felt like an injury as opposed to a foreign body stuck in my foot. I didn’t realize beforehand that the difference would be so distinct. Before I went in, I just knew there was something in there. Now, it feels like it’s mending. As long as I’m wearing shoes, I can walk pretty normally.

That’s the problem, by the way. It’s my stupid habit of wearing shoes. I don’t know how I fell into that horrible crutch. Years ago, I used to run barefoot all the time. Trails, asphalt, even snow—I would run barefoot and my feet were impervious. Now, apparently, I can’t even withstand a stupid thorn or whatever. I need to toughen my feet up again. 

Last night, wearing tight-laced shoes, I went out with my jeans tucked into my socks, my shirt tucked into my jeans, a full face-mask respirator, and thick gloves. I needed to kill the nest of yellow jackets that took up residence inside the fence gate. There’s no sign of them today, so I guess the mission was successful. I was getting stung every time I wheeled a cart out to the pit. Mom got stung too. She was in the front yard though—I suspect different culprits.

There was a time yesterday when I was feeling pretty glum. My left foot wouldn’t take much weight, my right leg was full of yellow jacket venom, and my left arm ached from the tetanus shot. Everything is a little better today. That’s good enough. I’m very happy with progress in the right direction.

Albert watches as I soak my foot, bandage it up, and take my antibiotics. At least I don’t have to grind up the pills and put them in applesauce.