Beets and Feets

One of my favorite times to write blog posts is when I should be doing homework. I should be doing homework right now. Enough about that.

This week I had an experience with beets that reminded me of my favorite beet story.

Mrs. Blue's Favorite Beet Story

One of my good friends used to volunteer as a soccer coach for elementary school aged, inner city kids in New Haven, Connecticut. He started coaching when his son was in the soccer league and he just never quit. The inner city piece is important because New Haven inner city kids tend to be little roughians of little or no means who have never seen the likes of a beet.

Beets

My friend had recently been on a juicing kick. One of his favorite things to juice was Beets. This is understandable because beets are sweet and delicious. One of my favorite juices is beet, apple, and a shit ton of ginger root. In any event, he may have overdone it with the beet juice that day because running around the soccer field with a belly full of beet juice had made him terribly nauseas. So nauseas that he started barfing up the beet juice on the sidelines. 

This looks like a picture of beet drinking beet juice

Understandably, his team of little New Haveners thought their coach was puking up blood. 

"Coach! coach" they screamed. "Coach is puking up blood!!!!".

My friend stopped vomiting long enough to quell his young comrades. "No!" He sputtered. "It's beets".

"Beets?" they yelled back. "What's beets???"

He went on to school the youth on the root vegetable known as a beet. However, I'm guessing that following their coach's display none of these children was too eager to eat a beet. 

The end

What's beets? I smile just saying that aloud in my head. 

Mrs. Blue Beets Story (spoiler: not as good as coach's story)

I'm doing some clinical hours this semester in a podiatry office. Why podiatry? I'm interested in foot problems, have had my share of my own foot problems, like cutting and removing nasty toenails, and doing little surgeries. But most of all it was the only specialist's office I could find that would take me on as a student. On my second podiatry shift I decided to come to work with a tasty beet juice.

So far, it's been a wonderful experience. The office is staffed by two podiatrists who do office visits and surgery. I've only worked two shifts and I've learned a bunch. A lot of the patients are middle aged and elderly. Many are diabetics but we get some curve balls too. This week a mother brought in her seven year old son because he preferred to walk on his toes. He was even walking on his toes while participating in sports. Mom didn't think it was normal and brought him in to be evaluated. After assessing the boys feet we brought him into the office hallway and had him do a couple laps while we evaluated his gait. The good news is that the boy's gait was normal. The bad news is that he was an observant little kid who noticed some spots of red liquid on the floor. "Is that blood?" he asked without fear or judgement, only curiosity. 

Embarrassed, I realized that I must have spilled some of my beet juice when I brought my juice from one end of the office to the other. As my face turned beet red I assured the doctor and the boy that it was not blood but my beet juice. This ended the boy's query. Apparently he had heard of beets. The doctor said nothing. 

Later in the day as I was cutting a diabetic's toenails I felt one fly into my nose. 

Fairly average out of control diabetic feet

I didn't want to look incompetent so I just kept on clipping with a plan to blow it out after I left the room. The visit concluded and I went to the little bathroom to blow out the toenail. As I looked in the mirror I realized that the toenail was lodged very visibly in my front nose hairs. Neither the doctor or patient had mentioned it. 

Artist's interpretative reenactment of a nasal toenail.

Once again embarrassed I exited the bathroom nasal toenail free. As we prepared to enter the next room I tried to make light of the situation and perhaps bond with the doctor over nasal toenails. "Sorry, I just had to take a toenail out of my nose" I said. He did not respond with his own nasal toenail story. Instead he told me I had "good hands" which I believe is surgeon slang for "mad skillz". And then we went into the next room. I guess if you have good hands you can walk around with all the nasal toenails you want.