Corn Dog

I remember being a little girl, practicing my latest tap routine in my Meamama's (that's what I called my maternal grandmother) kitchen and asking her to join in. Sometimes she would. Other times she would tell me that her corns were hurting her, and she wouldn't. Back then I wasn't sure what she meant. Were these imaginary friends shaped as corn cobs? Is that what she called her toes? Did her false teeth hurt? I really didn't know and I didn't bother to ask.

For the last six months, Seka has been hobbling around as a pesky little pebble grew on her back right pad. For the most part it didn't bother her while she ran in the soft grass in the back yard or walked around on the carpeted areas of the house. But if we walked on the concrete during our morning walks, route was cut very short and the whole event involved more hopping on three legs than actual walking. All of these are classic signs of corns, so after some close inspection, my suspicions were confirmed. It wasn't big and I tried to keep it soft by rubbing Bag Balm on it nightly, but the darn thing took on a life of its own and as of last week, it was nearly the size of the entire pad.


Handsome Dr. Slappy told me to get out the emery board and sand down the corn as it grew to keep it flush with the pad, which we've done. But last week, while I put off house work, I noticed that the darn corn was starting to peel off. In fact, I could run the edge of the tweezers around half of the circumference of the corn. She's let me pick at it and pick at it and it gets a little looser every day, but I'm a little concerned about picking it off completely. So, I'm trying to lift it off a little bit every day so it will heal underneath and continue to loosen up.

She definitely doesn't like me messing with her toe, but she tolerates it. She hasn't come right out and turned down an offer to tap dance with me yet, but I really don't want to wait until its hurting her so badly that she declines any potential future invitations.