Chilblains and Other Unintended Consequences

I made fifty-two trips around the sun without ever hearing about chilblains. This year I found out all I never wanted to know about that condition, firsthand, or actually, first foot. The name “chilblains” itself sounds preposterous: "What? Refrigerated brains?" It sounds like something found in kidney pie, another troublesome term.

So, here is my tale of woe, so that you can remain chilblain-free for all of your days.

I wear airy shoes as much as I can: sandals, mesh shoes, and sneakers with holes drilled in them for ventilation. Old sneakers, of course, with pretty much all the sneak gone out of them. My feet get hot. And sweaty. And stinky. Oh, yes, I am a walking, talking, fungal funhouse, even though I have a very high level of foot hygiene. Even my wife says so, and she sees lots of feet and toes as the owner of The Arkansas Yoga Center. One usually does yoga barefoot.

I wear this airy footwear year-round, usually with warm socks that wick the wetness away. I wear regular shoes when it’s too cold or wet. I like to be comfortable. I do get some strange looks, mostly in winter, and my father used to think I was slightly mad until he got cellulitis from athlete’s foot fissures. Now he and I are the geezer patrol with our sandals and socks. Real babe magnets.

That’s the set up for what happened on January 10th when I set out on my trusty Raleigh to bike the Scull Creek Trail in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The temperature was 48 degrees, with sunny skies and a light northwest wind. I dressed in appropriate layers and put on a pair of Smart Wool socks and my leather sandals.

I set out for a refreshing trip on the trail. A couple of miles up the trail, I noticed that my toes were getting colder than expected. In the bright sun, I looked down at my dogs and noticed that this particular pair of socks was threadbare around the toes. The wool had long since migrated into the lint screen of my dryer, leaving the elastic threads to pretend at protection. I subsequently retired these old troopers.

I soon pulled off the trail near a bench, got off my bike, and sat down to rub and warm my toes. They were somewhat numb and also a bit painful. I apologized to them for rushing the sock selection, squeezed them a bit longer with my bare hands, and then got on my bike and pointed it homeward. I wound up stopping another time to repeat the warming routine. This made them a little less numb, but a tad more painful. I finished the return trip at a slower speed because I realized that the wind was exacerbating the problem.

I was relieved to make it home, a little miffed with myself, and quite eager to warm my frigid phalanges. It was then I made the crucial, ignorant, miscalculation. Wearing worn socks was regrettable, but I’d had much colder feet and toes before. And I had just the solution. I thought.

NEXT: "The Bag Mistake"