Peeing on your foot. The implications change drastically as the context changes.
When I was four years old, plodding along happily in the sand at Panama Beach in Florida, I blundered into a jellyfish. The sole of my foot ignited with pain and I erupted into agonized screams such as only a toddler can muster. My father assessed the situation and then, to my utter bafflement and horror, lowered the front of his swim trunks with one hand while he extracted his penis with the other. He began peeing on my foot.
The trauma caused me to enter into a sort of fugue state. The next thing I remembered was my mother putting some sort of soothing cream on my foot back in the motel room. She explained that my dad had peed on my foot to save me pain, not to be mean. She said that urine had medicine in it that takes away the jellyfish sting. It sounded plausible, but I was wary of my father, especially when he was in his skivvies, for quite a while afterwards.
Adolescence brings changes for everyone, but an additional burden I had to face was the onset of Type 1 diabetes. Some of the symptoms I had to endure were a constant insatiable thirst and urge to urinate. The bathroom that served my classroom was a one-holer, so I frequently found myself waiting desperately outside the door. My urinary sphincter wasn’t up for the challenge and the tell-tale dark circle of shame would form next to my zipper.
I would drink what was available to children at the time to slake our thirst: milk, chocolate milk, orange juice, Kool-Aid and soda pop. The more I drank, the thirstier I got until finally I was taken into the hospital suffering from severe abdominal pain. They thought I had appendicitis, so they scheduled me for surgery the next morning. Since I was going to be under anesthetic, my chart instructed the nurse to give me a large cup of orange juice at 10pm and then no more food or fluids until after the surgery. The surgeon noted that my breath smelled strongly of acetone, a sure sign of uncontrolled high blood sugar. He ordered a series of blood sugar tests be conducted, but no change was made to my chart. A nurse came in at 10pm and dutifully made me drink a huge Styrofoam cup filled with orange juice. I vomited profusely and then lapsed into a coma for three days.
I had vivid dreams that I was on a submarine that kept slipping under the surface of a sea of orange juice as my parents watched me from the railing of a ship above. When I emerged from the coma, I found myself in a hospital bed, with the metal railings pulled up on the sides, my tearful parents looking down on me with concern. I wondered if something had gone wrong with the surgery, but my abdomen was unscathed. The doctor was summoned, and I was given the news that I wasn’t a little boy anymore, but something called a diabetic.
The doctor explained that my pancreas was no longer producing insulin and that I would have to take injections for the rest of my life and severely limit my intake of sugar and other carbohydrates. I burst into tears. I still had half a plastic grocery sack full of Halloween candy tucked under my bed at home. Then I found out that carbohydrates meant stuff like cake and French fries and pizza. I was twelve years old and my life was over. I had hit rock bottom.
They taught me how to draw and inject insulin shots with a hypodermic needle and they showed me how to test my blood sugar. In this day and age, all I have to do is pinprick one of my fingers and place a tiny drop of blood on a test strip. Back then the only option was urine testing. I had a little plastic kit that contained a test tube, a cup the size of a film canister, and a small bottle full of reagent pills. I had to pee into the film canister, place exactly five drops of urine into the test tube, dilute it with ten drops of water, then drop in a reagent pill. It would bubble up into a vile mixture with a distinct color. I had to compare the color of the solution to a little chart on the side of the reagent bottle and this would tell me what my blood sugar was about an hour ago. Needless to say, the first time I tried to fill the film canister, I peed all over my foot.
The next big change in my life came when I left home to go to college in a city that was three hours away from my parental units. The University of Texas, in its infinite wisdom, decided to place all the students who had never been away from home before together in one dormitory. The latchkey kids who had been raising themselves for years served as gurus of laundry and grocery shopping. The freshmen who had been under strict parental supervision their whole lives went ape shit. There was no surface – floor, wall or ceiling – that was untouched by beer. Closet-sized rooms filled with fragrant smoke turned their inhabitants into red-eyed hams. Four residents sharing a restroom caused my foot to endure yet more pee.
I somehow survived this melee and made my way to adulthood when I finally had a son of my own. I looked down at a soft and rubbery miniaturized version of myself laying on the changing table. I removed his soiled diaper, cleaned him thoroughly, and placed a pristine diaper under his rosy butt as he held his legs aloft. He grinned knowingly as a golden stream geysered up in an arc and he peed on his foot.
Literature in Small Doses 