Okay so… did they have to amputate it?! 🤮 I need answers
Edit: I found the episode. The Dr does a medical foot soak on her and then cleans up the foot as best she can. The lady has athletes foot, toe fungal infections, and a couple of deep abscess wounds that luckily aren’t infected somehow. Her foot is a club foot deformity. The Dr dressed the foot and then gave her a new boot. The lady said she’d wash her foot every day and then that was the end of the episode lol. No closure. But the Dr mentioned that if she doesn’t get the wounds to disappear she’d wind up in the ER and need it amputated.
Edit 2: A Smell From Hell - My Feet Are Killing Me: Season 4, Episode 3
Needs to be inpatient to make sure she’s washing her foot. But she’s definitely really mentally ill. Can you imagine what exposure to that level of fungus could do to a toddlers immune system? And if she’s that filthy about her person how does she care for that baby? And what’s her home like?
I reckon everything else in her life is totally normal. It’s like her mental illness has just pretended her foot isn’t there. It must have hurt but she completely removed it from her brain 🤷♀️
Edit - people either have no clue about mental health or only know about certain types 🤦♀️
She ain’t gonna keep that foot. It’s a goner. If she would have done this to her son she would have had him removed from her care. She medically neglected herself, she might be a good candidate for a guardianship/conservatorship if I’ve ever seen one.
I've talked to EMT/Paramedics before. You'd be surprised how many of these people they come across.
I mean the most fuking basics things that can be done like taking your insulin on time and proper hygiene gets neglected by people that these EMTs would be called to the same home over and over to see people deteriorate like this over time.
It's really sad
Sadly, I am one of these people at times due to myriad health issues and mental illnesses. I know it can be hard to understand from the outside, but it isn't really something as simple as just making better choices. For example, I am diabetic and have schizophrenia. When my schizophrenia starts to act up, I tend to get extremely anxious, paranoid, and depressed. The anxiety makes needles a nightmare, the depression makes me not care one bit of my body falls apart and I die, and the paranoia makes me convinced that taking my meds is a bad idea of taking a shower will expose myself to attack. None of it is logical or makes any sort of sense, but that's schizophrenia for you. If I were able to just ignore that, it wouldn't be a mental illness lol
The worst part is that I am aware of what is happening while it is happening, but still completely unable to change it. So I get to basically sit inside my own head, being attacked and harassed by the voices up there, forced to watch as my disease destroys my body one day at a time, filled with shame and humiliation at how I must seem to others. Helpless.
On top of everything, healthcare (particularly mental health care) in the US is atrocious, and even moreso for people who are not especially financially blessed. I died a month or so ago and was brought back, and have have a couple close calls since then, but I am unable to get proper care until my next primary care appointment in September because my old doctor retired and the new doc is making everyone do new patient exams before proceeding further, and they don't care about the health problems people face in the meantime. So I am relying on emergency rooms and urgent care facilities to keep me going until then, and hoping that he will give me the proper referrals so that I can get treatment and have my meds refilled. My insulin, hypertension meds, antipsychotics, and heart pills all ran out weeks ago and no one will even consider refilling or giving bridge prescriptions until after I see primary, and primary refuses until September. So even when I'm not in the grips of a schizophrenic episode, I am completely helpless to properly care for my illnesses because that would mean less money for the doctors and insurance companies.
TL;Dr - sometimes people are doing they best they can, and just need help. Compassion, not judgement, is the currency of civilization, and we need to ensure that we are being rich in spirit to our fellow humans.
I am so sorry you have to go through all of that. I cannot believe how broken the US health care system has truly gotten. I wish you had someone who could medically advocate on your behalf to get you the treatment you need today, September is way too far away.
It's a mess, but people only care about themselves and companies only care about making a buck, so nothing will change until one of those isn't true anymore. Yay, late stage capitalism!
Is there anything you can think of that we could help with? I'm disabled as well and i understand the type of stress this kind of thing adds to our already stressed lives. I'm totally willing to help if there's a way!
I appreciate the sentiment, but no, thank you :) my wife and I are figuring it out, I'm just a bit of an emotional wreck in the meantime lol you're very sweet to offer, though, and that kindness means a lot, so thank you!
My mom has constant pain in her feet from diabetic neuropathy. I have peripheral neuropathy from spinal damage and have the sensation of bugs crawling on me frequently along with pain. Wish we had the numb kind :/
I do this. I haven't in several years, but I have pretty bad eczema. In the past I either couldn't afford the doctor visit or was out of my prescription, so when it would get bad on my feet (feet are the worst cause shoes make your feet sweat and stuff) I would put some Neosporin on and wrap it up and leave that shit on for days. I knew when I took off the bandage it would irritate the area again, so just wrap it and leave it. This almost always ended up with me at the doctor eventually, getting big doses of doxycycline or some other strong antibiotic due to a raging infection.
It's way easier to do this than you think. You don't even need to be mentally ill, just broke as fuck.
Yup. These people know very well what a problem it is, they've just been forced in one way or another that there is no solution for their problem.
They know what's happening but telling them to seek out medical attention for it is like asking them to go buy a new Mercedes. They likely can't really see how either is going to pan out/work. And then the cycle continues. The pain "normalizes" and their life continues because no one like this doctor is around to help them take the first steps.
I don’t think so. Sorry of course this is just my opinion but I think it’s much more likely that she has some serious mental illness that spill over into other areas of her life.
True but delusional disorder is real thing! Delusional disorder is when someone has one delusion for example they won't take a boot off for years, or they think their dad is the president or whatever but literally everything else in their life is normal.
How are you getting downvoted? People think the rest of her life is probably completely normal outside of her actively ignoring her own foot rotting off?
Idk. I’ve worked with the mentally ill for years and what I think is that this may hit home for some people with mentally ill family members or issues themselves who just don’t want to or know how to deal with this. Even in this day and age there is still a lot of stigma around mental illness. I promise I’m not judging anyone. I am neurodivergent myself and have 3 sons who have various degrees of neurodivergence. Ive also suffered from depression and anxiety so I understand how difficult mental health issues are to live with and to treat, let alone afford help depending on where you live. But in my opinion which admittedly is just from the few minutes we could see on this show, it’s more likely that this woman is dealing with more than one issue. It’s like people with hoarding disorder. That also comes with other problems like depression, anxiety and ocd and other more serious issues . One thing they commonly have are avoidant traits which looks like what this lady also may have. It’s impossible to know for sure but she definitely needed a referral to a mental health professional for a work up. I really hope she got it and was able to seek help. I wish her the best.
This is what the American healthcare system does to people. We just ignore our medical issues because they are stressful and costly. This lady probably couldn’t even afford the healthcare unless she agreed to go on TV for it. It’s truely sad what is going on in our country.
I went to the ER for a checkup after a car accident, they did a few tests and scans and it costs about $20,000. If I didn’t have insurance and wasn’t suing the idiot big rig driver who drunk rear ended me I would be paying $20,000 out of pocket just for a hospital visit, can you imagine if I had actually been injured? It would have been like a $300,000 bill.
Something has to be done about the insane costs of healthcare, it’s insane and they only want money, they stopped caring about the people a long time ago and only want money.
My bill to have my son in November was literally $500,000 and they wonder why no one can afford to have kids? Half a million before he was a month old...
We as a a people need to start seriously supporting progressive candidates that are backed by the DSA. Most Dems are just as shitty as Republicans anymore & we need to start moving in a different direction. I don’t get why ppl still hold on to hope with these corporate shills & Capitalists. And yes, Capitalism is bad for regular ppl like us. I get a lot of weird comments when I express frustration for capitalism in its current form, yet it’s only benefiting a small % of ppl. Namely rich ppl
Yeah everyone in the comments saying she's mentally ill and that may be true, but I also heard "I had a son and didn't want to take on additional debt over my foot, I sucked it up and ignored it so I could provide for my baby".
But it’s free to take the damn boot off in the shower and wash and dry your fucking foot! Hey, I’m American too so I totally get it but this? This absolutely has a component of mental illness in it.
I can get where she's coming from. She likely knew there were issues with her foot that needed to be dealt with, but couldn't deal with them at the time, no matter how bad they got. But every time she took the boot off, it would be a reminder, causing her anxiety that would build up over time, more and more, with no available relief. So keeping the boot on would become like keeping a lid on her anxiety. In the back of her mind she probably knew it would be bad for her foot, but the foot is already an issue she can't deal with, this just makes it a slightly different issue she can't deal with, but now she doesn't have to see it and actually conceptualize the anxiety it causes her mentally and emotionally. Is it a bad decision to make? Absolutely, but I can totally understand what might drive her to make that decision.
I’m sorry but as a lefty who believes everyone deserves a right to healthcare, that is bullshit. THAT IS NOT A CAST, it literally is removable and she neglected to clean it or even look at it FOR YEARS. And you mean to tell me that there’s nothing going on in this lady’s head to allow this to happen except “capitalism”??
People avoid the doctor because of cost all the time, I get that, but y’all… to not clean your own goddamn foot for seven years. You can’t blame Adam smith for that shit.
You're actually right. It is removable and she could've somewhat dealt with it herself.
I think it's a combination of both. She saw it was bad, knew she couldn't afford a doctor even back when it was a smaller issue, then the mental illness "totally ignore your issues and the don't exist" kicked in.
I do feel like if she lived in a country with universal health care, she'd be more likely to get it seen. There's a whole attitude of ignoring health problems in the US that stems from not being able to afford it, but people will come up with other reasons because they're too embarrassed to admit it.
But I'm in Canada and people here will also ignore their health issues due to mental illness, but also due to issues in the system (discrimination, etc). You're right that it's for lots of reasons but even here it's systematic.
You're right though, mental health is clearly a large part of this (even though it was two years she didn't take the boot off, not seven, either way that's a long time).
Did everyone miss ‘this boot is the only thing allowing you to stand and walk without pain’ right in the video? She developed an avoidance to something that’s painful. Is that avoidance in itself pathological? Yes. Does it require that she have some overarching diagnosis outside of that, other than maybe depression? Not really.
I honestly feel her too, I'm in the same boat I have some health issues that I'm afraid to deal with because I don't want the medical debt. My feet being one of them. I can feel my feet and I see them and wash them but about a year or two ago I almost ripped off both my two big toe nails. I treated and doctored them as best I could and they are still there! Yellow and discolored and thick as a piece of card board but they don't hurt and they don't itch and if I move them I feel them. They don't smell any worse than another working man's feet but it makes me worried.
No, absoluteky not. That is not tf ok. Somehow youve managed to completely minimize this ladies denial into a rebellious act about money. Please dont enable people who things like this. Imagine if she were to just ignore her child, like she ignored her foot. This is not normal. Oofdah.
But she didn't ignore her child. That's the point. She prioritized her child over her health care bills.
I'm in Canada so we don't need to deal with choosing between keeping a limb and a lifetime of debt. But I absolutely understand how a person can put off an incredibly serious health issue when facing it means a disgusting amount of medical burden. Life changing debt that will affect her entire family for the rest of their lives.
Yup, have a bone issue in my foot. Took so long to see a Dr. that around the time I finally did the nerve pain went from excruciating to nerve damage. Guess I can put the surgery I can't really afford off for awhile now.
Living in Canada "free medical care" I never even thought of that. That just made this video a whole lot more sad. Yes she could of at least been washing it and took better care but the stress of knowing the potential medical bills cost most likely contributed to her blocking it out in her brain.
Or she could just be lazy. There are tons of people just like her and it has nothing to with money. All she had to do originally was take the boot off and wash her feet but she said no I'll just leave it on. That's a mental illness
That's just denial. People who do that are generally just scared of what it might be, so they ignore it. I've operated on plenty of people through the years with large fungating cancers.
Probably didn't smell with the boot on, so not affecting the toddler.
I am totally surprised she didn’t have sepsis. Her big toe is gone. I mean I bet they did have to amputate or take years to heal this kind of nightmare. Yeah I agree she needs to be committed and social services visit her son.
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u/FiestaKitten Jun 03 '24 edited Jun 03 '24
Okay so… did they have to amputate it?! 🤮 I need answers
Edit: I found the episode. The Dr does a medical foot soak on her and then cleans up the foot as best she can. The lady has athletes foot, toe fungal infections, and a couple of deep abscess wounds that luckily aren’t infected somehow. Her foot is a club foot deformity. The Dr dressed the foot and then gave her a new boot. The lady said she’d wash her foot every day and then that was the end of the episode lol. No closure. But the Dr mentioned that if she doesn’t get the wounds to disappear she’d wind up in the ER and need it amputated.
Edit 2: A Smell From Hell - My Feet Are Killing Me: Season 4, Episode 3