RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33774, 21 February 1975, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

CHECKPOINT

She was not a hypochondriac, but she did try t» notice any early signs of approaching illness. After all. beyond 70 one is living on borrowed time, and eternal vigilance is only a sensible precaution. At a more tender age the problems of inspecting oneself are not too severe, as most parts of the body tend to be quite regularly exposed, especially in summer; but the glory of autumn is not reflected in a glory of the autumnal body, and when one graduates into the sere and yellow leaf one is less wont to expose anything beyond what the norma) exigencies of living dema..d to be exposed. Thus, inspections become best attended to when all must be revealed — in one’s bath. She carefully checked her arms, her torso, her legs: they all seemed in their place and well able to carry her through until next bath-time... but her toes! Her toes were all black! As she dried her-

seif, she paid special attention to her feet, dabbing them carefully lest worse befall. There was no feeling of malaise about them, yet their colour! . . . In her rose bushes, such a phenomenon was known as die-back, a dread disease, to be cured if at all by cutting off not only the offending portion but a whole lot more in case that too was affected. She had heard too of more specifically human complaints such as leprosy and gangrene. That night she went to sleep only after hours of tossing, thinking of Uncle Andrew who died in the trenches after six operations to, remove successive bits of his legs; she dreamt of sitting outside the Lepers Trust Board office with a bowl in het hand; she awoke to the snip-snip of the man next door clipping his hedge, which in her half-waking state she attributed to someone attacking her in the region of the knees with a pair of shears. At her next bath the

same blackness of the toes was evident. She grew haggard with worry. Although usually an active person she spent hours on the sofa to keep her weight off her feet, but found it difficult to concentrate even on “Coronation Street” because her feet were so much on her mind. She confided her fears to her daughter, who advised a visit to her doctor — whom she tries to avoid as far as she can, on the grounds that doctors don’t want to be worried over people who can’t be long for this world anyway. Eventually she consulted an old friend noted for wisdom but also for bluntness. “You do use soap on your toes?” asked the blunt one. She hadn’t of late, because her toes seemed to be growing further away from her as the years passed; but she made the effort, and soon her toes were as pink as her face was red. The black was dye from a new pair of shoes.