Snappy September - Day Twenty - My Left Boob (and other body parts).

Yep, I'm most likely encouraging the porn-reliant, lonely fetishistic crazies out there with today's title but even so, I should warn all of you that the following photos are progressively more and more confronting and I don't just mean the one immediately under this paragraph which was taken just after a run.




















Running is clearly very good for me physically and psychologically, but I've had to endure a few cuts and scrapes along the way. These mostly occur when I overstep and tread on the dead plastic at the front of the treadmill then lose my footing and get flung rather rudely backwards into the tool shed wall.

That's a weekly occurrence and my body is hardened to it and rarely complains but the bleeding boob injury rears up around every three months or so. Sometimes the underwire does more than provide 'form fitting support during intense sporting activities' and decides to cut an angry red semi-circle around my boob as well. By the time the cut has healed (which is a challenge seeing as I run three days a week and usually crack the freshly-formed scab and re-open the wound), it's time to rip open a new one. And it's always the left boob, no matter what brand, size, cut, colour or style the sports bra. Someone ought to fund a study into the phenomenon.....

Running may give me extra energy and a resting heart rate of 58 beats a minute but it sure as hell hasn't made my Ronald McDonald-sized feet any prettier. I have a yellow coloured, permanently pus-filled long blister on the back of both heels with so many lacquer-hard layers of skin that sometimes I take to hacking at them with a pair of scissors and end up with what looks like an open, slightly smiling mouth that 'talks' when I'm walking and Milly likes to lick when she gets a chance.

This photo also gives a glimpse of the big bunion thingy that's decided to start growing on the side of my big toe: not unlike a lost finger knuckle who has given up and decided to set up home on the West Bank (ie my foot).

Factor in also the blisters and callouses I have on the tips of the other toes, the chalky-looking, short cut nails and the occasional blackened, soon-to-drop off nail and they're not a sight that Wittners are keen to see when it is sandals buying season.

Now readers who aren't already squeamish should click away now. That's right; head over to LOLcats or CakeWrecks and laugh your revulsion away because just below this text, it gets even more graphic.

Okay. Anyone still here? Are the disgusted ones gone? Good. Are those who bravely remain ready for the next one? Really?

Sure? Absolutely, positively certain that you want to continue?

Alrighty then. My right armpit. The bleeding boob is never noticed whilst I'm running because I'm in THE ZONE MAN,the zoooooonnnne but the armpit starts to stick and grip against the flesh that it rubs against, becoming more pronounced as the minutes tick by. I've recently taken to keeping a pot of vaseline in the shed so that I can jump off, pull up my t-shirt and wodge a big chunk of oily stuff on the sore bits to prevent them from rubbing raw.

It doesn't seem to work.

I asked Love Chunks to take this photo, but he refused. "Kath, I've done a lot of things in my life with you, but taking a photo of your stubbly, BO-blasted, sweat-infested armpit just after you've wiped the blood off with your wet running t-shirt is an absolute NO."

Selfish git, isn't he, making me face the mirror and take this with my shaking left hand?

When the water of the shower hit it a few minutes later, I grunted in discomfort.

When some stray drops of shampoo found their way to the spot, I swore a little. Not the seriously offensive post-9:30pm swear words, just a Tony Abbott.*

When I had conditioner sitting in my hair, soap on my face and was absentmindedly starting to wash down the 'ol bod with the puff thingy full of shower gel, habit made me rub under there vigorously. That was until my scream of agony caused me to stop, open my eyes in shock and surprise and then scream again as Fresh Apple Blossom for Fine Hair ran into my pupils and fried them in acid but not before I noticed that the pit had started bleeding again and stained the foam on the puff a fetching fairy floss pink.

But boobs bounce back, blisters harden and armpits heal. Ingrown toe nails, however, never seem to ever be destroyed and mine first appeared when I was twelve and reappears in a most painful manner every decade or so.

The last time I had to have it cut out it was the injection - a thick, 4 centimetre long needle pushed directly between the big and second big toe - that was agony. Every single millimetre the needle pierced and jabbed its way further into my flesh and muscle KILLED and it didn't help that the doctor kept apologising continuously as he did so.

It has swollen again, but the needle memory hasn't dimmed and I've been trying to tell myself that it'll go away of its own accord like all the other times that it ..... hasn't. Alas my procrastination means that it's now infected and whilst I can still run because the toe is compacted in my shoe whilst doing so, once I finish and gingerly undo the laces and peel off my sock, it starts to swell, throb angrily and protest.

There's slightly more than a Tony Abbott expletive when I'm in the shower, bending over getting my upturned arse scalded as I squeeze the puss out of my toe: it's an Andrew Bolt** moment.

And why do I endure all of these hurty things? Because I love to run. Love it, live for it, need it.

* Tiny shit (Tony Abbott)

** Slime sucking Scumbag Puss Crust Fuck Knuckle!! (Andrew Bolt)