I think my toe is broken….If it isn’t broken, it is very badly sprained or something! The funny thing about it though is that I have no idea how it got this way. I noticed a dull pain the day before yesterday (Wednesday) at our performance at the Parque Mirador. I always wiggle my toes during the day to get some blood flowing to my little piggies…especially since we are in boots for almost 29 ½ hours of the day, which is most of the day for you non-military types...wink...wink. So after our performance, I started to wiggle them around and noticed that my right big toe felt a bit stiff. That was about it….that is until I went to sleep that night. I woke up during the night and stayed awake for most of the night because my toe was throbbing! I got up at about 2 a.m. to seek out some light to check out my toe, and when I looked at it, it was about double the size of the other toe and I couldn’t bend it at all! YIKES! Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep Wednesday night.

Yesterday we had our very last performance in DomRep. It was at the VA site again. And once again, we got rained on. What’s sort of funny about that (if you can find something funny about rain falling down on electrical equipment) is that Aaron and I started our set with a Gloria Estefan song called Como Me Duele Perderte which means I Hurt Because I Lost You. It is a beautiful love song and the very first line says something about how the rainy days consume her. Just as soon as we started, the rain came down! Boo for that, but I thought it was pretty funny/ironic. Our plan for yesterday was to play four hours, but unfortunately the rain had other plans. So the brass group played first and then we played…then the rain came…and stopped…we went to lunch…and more rain came so we had to stop for the day. We tore down, loaded and were back at the boat landing zone in just enough time to catch a boat back to the ship. Immediately upon arrival on the ship, I made my way to the sick bay to have my toe looked at. Just to back track a bit, while we were at the VA site, one of the med-techs looked at my toe and said that he thought it might be GOUT. Since I don’t know what GOUT is I asked about it....specifically about whether or not I should expect my toe to fall off during the night….I like my toes. The quick explanation I got was that it is a buildup of Uric acid in the body and this happens when you consume a lot of meats, eggs, and very rich foods…which normally at home I don’t do but since I eat what is available, I have been eating pretty rich-ly (?). Also not enough water consumption to flush out the acids can add to the possibility of getting GOUT. I normally drink about a GALLON of water at home per day and only sweat when I’m at the gym. Here it seems to be the opposite; I sweat about a gallon a day (eww…) and it seems like I only drink water when I am at the gym. Okay so anyway back to yesterday. I went to sick bay and had my toe looked at. Dr Delapeña was so nice! He looked at my toe and compared the two…and like me, he noticed the swelling. He checked out my boots to see if there is anything was anything inside that could be pressing in. NOTHING. Then he asked me the obligatory questions….if I hit it on anything, to which I answered ‘I’m pretty sure I haven’t, but if I did, I don’t remember'. Then he tried to do an exam. TRIED being the key word. Holy smokes! He started pressing where the first joint meets the big toe and there was no pain. He then went up to the middle joint and touched it and I about jumped off the table and clawed the ceiling. He was poking and probing but he couldn’t get a good exam in because it hurt SO bad! He prescribed me an anti-inflammatory/pain-reliever, put me on ‘light duty’ (which makes me feel like a wimp-o, but it’s fine because we don’t have anything going on for a few days), told me to elevate my foot and wants me to come back on Sunday when hopefully the swelling has gone down and some of the pain has subsided. Thankfully, he said he doesn’t think it’s the GOUT (hehe), but since the exam was unsuccessful and not as thorough as a normal exam, he doesn’t know what it is. After taking the meds last night and twice today, my toe feels better and I can bend it to a certain point but it’s still swollen and hurts some. If my toe is still hurting on Sunday, I am going to get a washcloth, roll it up and bite down on it and scream while he squeezes around my toe…cause I need to know what’s going on. Pray for me y’all!

Thanks for stopping by….
Keisha