The television commercial
was designed to make me immediately want to run out and get a neuropathy risk
assessment. But it didn’t work on me.
I must admit that at first
the commercial caught my ear. The all-knowing voiceover explained that neuropathy
is nerve damage and then it rattled off symptoms. “Do you suffer from numbness
or tingling in your fingers and or toes?” it said. “Do you have cold feet?”
Cold feet? I always have
cold feet. If the temperature is below 80 degrees, I get cold feet. I even get
cold feet if the temperature is above 80 degrees if there’s too much air conditioning,
like in a hotel. When its hot outside, hotels crank up the air conditioning and
it feels like you’re in a meat locker.
So maybe this means I have
neuropathy. And maybe my cold feet might kill so maybe I shouldn’t be so
cavalier about them! Maybe I should get a neuropathy risk assessment right
away, as the all-knowing voiceover urged me to do.
But I didn’t do it. I didn’t
do it even though the all-knowing voiceover warned of all the scary things that
can happen if neuropathy goes untreated. A person can end up in a wheelchair!
That didn’t scare me.
Untreated neuropathy can
even lead to amputation!
That didn’t scare me either.
When I was a kid, I got some sort of bad infection in my foot. As I was sitting
with my foot hanging over the bathtub so my mother could scrub it, she said to
me, “You better be careful, or you might have to have your foot cut off!”
And I said, “So what. I
don’t use it anyway.”
That’s how I felt about it,
even as a kid. About half of my body didn’t work anyway. I just dragged it
around for cosmetic purposes. It might be a relief not to have to do that
anymore. So maybe the cure for perpetually cold feet is not to have any feet.
The all-knowing voiceover never said untreated neuropathy can be lethal. So it couldn’t scare me. I guess I wasn’t the right demographic.
But seeing that commercial
did bring me a certain peace of mind. At least I now know that my cold feet
won’t kill me.
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