Straightening out my toes

My excellent foot surgeon, Dr. Alan Hammond, performed his second surgery on my right foot on Friday. He previously fused some bones in each foot  building arches were there had been none, correcting Stage Four Flat Foot. This recent surgery corrected a very bad case of hammertoes, which he  fixed by cutting the tendons in all five toes, and inserting pins. They have cute little heads like bulletin board push pins for the moment. They will go, and the pins will stay. So in my right foot I have four four inch screws fusing my foot, and giving me an arch, 5 pins straightening my toes and a plate fixing  the ankle which I broke lunging for a toonie on Portage avenue winter  2010.  Wait a minute, with 12 surgeries now, I should be able to make up a new 12 days of Christmas song; part of my work-in-progress, Music for Men Over Fifty, Poems of Love and Surgery.  Photos by Lynn Chalmers.