After a glorious day spent tumbling into mounds of plush snow and stuffing my face with hamburgers and hot toddies at a local tavern, I woke up the morning after New York City’s January snowstorm like most of my fellow New Yorkers: hung over and cold.
My bedroom doesn’t have heat (my landlord scares me and well, there are sacrifices one makes for crown molding), so I place a heating pad on the floor beside my bed, which I turn on at the first sound of my alarm.
But on this particular morning, as I placed my cold feet on the heating pad, I felt shards of glass in my toes. I walked to work, and winced with every step. I called my primary care doctor, whose receptionist told me his next available appointment was in April—at which point, I told her I’d saw off my own toes from the pain if I had to wait that long.
