I didn’t know for sure what a Podiatrist does. Several people had commented on the fact that having diabetes as well as a foot that has been shattered might mean trouble for me, possibly amputation, if the illness affected the foot.

I spoke to Dr Hood at Lake Munmorah and he added a podiatrist to the chronic care package I have.

Angela Green’s Podiatry is almost at the end of my street so naturally I opted for them.

It was a very pleasant experience. They have National Geographic magazines in the waiting room! I can bear almost any wait if I have a few National Geographic magazines to read but it wasn’t long anyway.

I saw a guy called James Ivers. I was directed into a room with a couple of chairs and a desk. There was a big chair similar to a dentist’s chair without all the painful stuff. He asked a few questions and proceeded to check my feet for diabetes damage.

There is a little machine, a portable Doppler unit, that senses the pulse in your feet. Ho moves a little wand about the top of your foot until it hears the blood passing through a vein. It transmits the noise of the blood in your foot to a speaker and makes a whoosh, whoosh, noise. You can tell from that how well blood is passing throughout the foot. Mine is very good although my heart has something wrong with the way it beats. Something for my doctor to look into later after he reads the report.

He then prodded my foot with a little piece of nylon while I told him where it was touching. That tells him if there is any nerve damage.

My toe-nails were snipped and then hit with a little grinder to make them smooth. My feet are very sensitive but I barely noticed it was happening.

We sat for several minutes and discussed specialized shoes. I have been struggling to get good information since about 1983 and now I know where to go and what to discuss. That is a big deal.

I have only found one pair of runners that don’t cause me trouble walking (Brooks Adrenaline, my last pair were GT5. I still wear them all the time, I think they are about five or six years old) but I have not been keen on getting a pair because I suspected the inner had been redesigned and I don’t have the money to buy a pair and find they hurt me. Coincidentally he had a recent pair of the same shoe to show people how some of his medical inserts worked. I tried them on and it looks as though the design of the inner is the same. That too is a very big deal for me.

We managed to get through a lot in a short time. Questions troubling me for quite a few years are answered.

Even paying the bill was a dream. They do this thing now where its all electronic, or maybe people have been doing it a while and I have not noticed!

They put your bank card through the little ATM machine and then it links up with the Medicare card numbers somehow and the money goes from the bank to medicare and the balance medicare owes you is returned while you are still standing with your hand out for the card. Considering how difficult it is for me to get around that little process is real luxury!

I really should write in here a lot more. I have been slack .