"Avoid surgery at all cost, at all times."

This is what our friend J says-- and J is a retired doctor who has performed surgery.

My husband and I happened to see him yesterday after dinner while we were walking in the park with Gracie. We got to talking about the foot doctor, and J asked me if he could take a look-see at my feet. Not a problem for me, because I've always said that if J were still a practicing physician, he'd be our doctor for everything.

J said that the bunion on my right foot wasn't big at all, and the one on my left foot was even smaller. He said bunion surgery for me would be for "cosmetic purposes only," which is not something I want to be doing. Especially after he told me everything that happens to the body when it's under anesthesia. Which is why he always says that avoiding surgery is the best way to go, unless of course, the surgery is for a life-threatening problem. And a bunion isn't going to kill anyone.

So now I'm thinking I may not even go to the foot doctor at all. My foot isn't hurting anymore, and even with that pain I had last week-- which was most likely due to the dirt-moving, not the bunion-- I'm not anxious now to get my feet under an x-ray machine just to see what that doctor has to say. I have a couple of weeks to make up my mind, so I'll see how I feel about all of this before the appointment day comes along. Now, of course, I'm glad that the first appointment was cancelled because of the glitch with the insurance company.

I've been calling my friend L, who is due to get bunion surgery during the first week of August, and I've been telling her all this new information I've found out about bunions in the last few days. Now she's thinking about cancelling her surgery as well. She has spoken to her two friends who have had the surgery already, and now they're telling her all the bad things about the surgery and the recovery. Before she started asking her friends specific questions, they had only told her that they were happy with the surgery and pleased with the foot doctor. Now they have told her how awful the recovery was, and that they were mostly immobile for four weeks after the surgery. L wasn't thrilled to hear that, because she's due to start working again two and a half weeks after her surgery date. (Which would be just about impossible for her, since she's on her feet all day at her job.)

So the foot doctor may be losing both me and C's mom as patients.

And I'm looking on the bright side........ I've taken so many high-heeled narrow shoes out of my closet that I get to go shoe-shopping again.