Descriptive Essay: The Toe That Was Overlooked

“Oh man that doesn’t feel good.” That’s what I was thinking after making a great catch where I reached out near my foot to make what’s called a “shoestring catch.” I came off the shady baseball field, overlooked by the many trees on that dark afternoon. “Why does my foot hurt so much? It’s mostly my toe.” I was thinking. I came in limping and wincing in pain as if someone just stabbed the side of my foot multiple times. 

As I went to sit down on the bench, my grandfather asked me what was wrong and I said “My toe hurts a lot. And part of my foot.”

  He said, “Don’t give into the pain.” 

I replied, “I’m not, but my foot hurts like a mug.” 

Afterwards, I just sat there rubbing my foot hoping it would nurse it back to normal but it didn’t work. I then went into the field limping and cursing my foot under my breath. I played the entire game limping and fighting through the pain, so I could try to help my team. After the game we had lost by 5 points and I was upset because it was a very winnable game. My mind was cluttered with thoughts of how we could have won and my thought process snapped with every step I took as the pain really set in. I could barely walk now as I headed to the truck to give my teammate a ride home. I went to sleep that night trying to get ready for a full day of pain and suffering. 

This was the stupidest thing I’ve done so far in my life. That kept going through my mind as I was constantly walking and stopping to rest and massage my throbbing foot. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make it home if my foot didn’t stop hurting. I felt like there was a 1 ton weight just sitting on my entire foot. I had a playoff baseball game in 4 days and I was in no condition to play, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to miss my 1st high school playoff game. Even if we lost, at least I was there. My parents said, “Soak your foot in epsom salt and you will be just fine.” But I was thinking, “Put yourself in my place, then lets see if all I need is epsom salt.” When I got home that night I slowly limped over to the bathroom to fill the blue tub with water to soak my foot in epsom salt. As I lay down on my bed my head began to throb as I wondered whether or not I would be able to play come Monday afternoon

Over that weekend I tried to stay off my foot as much as I could, but of course I couldn’t since neither my family nor I realized the excruciating pain I was going through. My parents had me doing work over the weekend; I helped clean the house and the front lawn. As I was getting the push broom out of the shed a shovel fell over and landed on my toe. I thought it was over for me. I hopped around the yard yelling and stopping myself from cursing the shovel for what it just did to me. I sat down and felt my foot which was throbbing very fast. The amount of pain I feeling was equal to someone cutting of my toe. Afterwards I hopped as fast as I could up the steps and into the house so I could ice my foot and rest up to finish cleaning the yard. I finished cleaning the yard 2 hours later with ice on my foot. I shivered the whole time and I couldn’t feel my foot after 15 min. of having it on. Later that night, I soaked my foot in epsom salt again, which didn’t help but my parents insisted. I went to bed that night ready to just give up on playing in the playoff game, but in my mind I would have seemed like a punk. So hurt foot and all, I wasn’t going to give up.

Monday finally came and I woke up. I had a slight headache and my eyes were kinda blurry. I got out of bed and stopped myself from yelling and waking everyone up as I put pressure on my foot. I tried my best to walk to the bathroom supporting myself on the walls. I thought to myself hopefully I will be able to make it through the day. I told myself that after the season I would go to the doctor to see what was wrong with me. I never complained about my injury as much as most people would think. I never even asked to stay home from school or miss a baseball game. When I got to school, I was greeted by the warm welcoming of walking up the stairs to the 3rd floor. In a few hours we would be leaving for the bus to take us to the baseball field. When 1:30 finally hit and it was time for us to leave, the moment of truth awaited me.

As we slowly walked off of the bus to see what the field was like, I sighed with relief because I noticed my limp wasn’t as bad as before. We started our routine warm ups, stretching our bodies, doing push ups, jogging and getting our throwing arms loosened by playing catch with each other. We had to do one exercise called “Frogs,” where we act like frogs without the jumping part. I still couldn’t bend my toes and when I did, a quick jolt of pain made me cringe to the point that I didn’t want to play the game at all. I knew that wasn’t an option though, and I fought through the pain. The game was starting in 5 minutes and people were trying to hype themselves up in their own way. Some people listened to music, others kept warming up or talked to teammates. I just sat on the bench by myself and prayed. The umpire then let the coaches and captains know that it was time.

Throughout the course of the game my foot felt fine, but it could have been better. I still felt the occasional shock of pain, but not as much. I had a very big hit that started a rally for us. They only gave me a double. I hit the ball so far they thought they couldn’t find it because it went into the woods. Although, soon as the umpire said go back to 2nd the kid on the other team found the ball so I got robbed of what could have been a home run. You can’t imagine the amount of disappointment I felt when the ump told me to go back to 2nd base. I think my face looked like I just lost my best friend. We hung in the game for few more innings, then the other team started to score run after run and we lost. I was happy that we had made it that far and that the captains got to go to the playoffs. After the game my toe felt like it was very overworked. I just chose to put my slides on, hop in the car and deal with the rest later.