this may be the week

This may at last be the week that my skin heals up. While I've engaged in limited stairs training, what I'm really eager to do is to get out there and walk—not long walks, mind you, but short walks of about 9 or 10 kilometers. It's frustrating, now, how close I am to being completely healed. There's still a tiny bit of leakage; I can see a stain on my sock at the end of a work day, but when I pull the sock off, expecting to feel a damp bandage, I'm surprised to find that the bandage feels dry. So maybe the seepage simply stops or something during the day. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, since that last Friday photo, the skin has closed up even more; this Friday's photo will, I hope, show a completely healed or nearly healed sole. We'll see. In the meantime, I guess I was wrong about needing to expose the skin to dry air at night; I never stopped bandaging everything up and using ointment; I'm also still doing Epsom-salt soaks, and despite all of that, the healing hasn't stopped. (No need for more antibiotics, either.) As they say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? I'm hoping that, by the end of this week, I won't need any more bandages, ointments, or soaks. Fingers and tentacles crossed.

Next week's going to be very busy: Immigration on Monday, dentist on Tuesday, Thanksgiving on Thursday (I start prepping the meal tomorrow so that it'll all be done and ready for next Thursday—stuff that can be made, then fridged or frozen), then departing for Daegu on Friday. And I'm not sure how much I'm looking forward to walking in the beginning-of-winter cold.

UPDATE—Wednesday, November 20: I now have my bus ticket for the 29th to go right back down to Hyeonpoong, and it's a short walk to the Hong-C Motel from there. I'll stay overnight and restart the walk in the morning. I'm excited and a little nervous. It's gonna be cold.

foot update: one week later

As you see below, more improvement since the previous week:

Friday-night results; the whole thing is pinching closed. Clouding-over is unmistakable now.

There isn't much oozing anymore, and I still have about two weeks until I leave for the rest of the walk. More time to heal. The opening is under a square inch in area. And you see how the ring of skin around the raw patch is completely healed. Incredible.

Look at how much ooze there was into the bandage on Friday:

barely anything

I'm confident I'll be fine when it's finally time to leave again.

interesting foot update

I was delighted to come home from a day at the office (I'm still not distance walking) to discover only minor discoloration of my bandages and no red/pink fluid anywhere. There was a little bit of weeping from the damaged skin, but it had gone way down. Quite a difference from this past Friday night. We may have entered a new phase of healing.

First pic: you can see the two layers of bandaging that I use. Sorry about the collected hairs; I thought I'd plucked all of the hairs off, but I would have needed much brighter, stronger lighting to see them, so here we are. Nasty hairs aside, note how little discoloration there is on the two layers of bandages. (Note, too, that I clipped out all of the bloody callus on my right big toe.) This minimal discoloration is a good sign.

hairy hairs

In the next pic, below, I've peeled back the bandages to reveal the damaged skin, which seems to have healed even more since Friday. Note how thick the healing epidermal skin is next to the still-raw, exposed dermis. Even after all of this heals, I'll be Leukotaping and maybe even gauzing the area up just to be sure this problem doesn't return. I'll also be taping up the big toe now that I've taken away that nasty-looking callus. And other areas will be taped up as well since I've already found some new friction spots that have appeared thanks to my new shoes (found while wearing the shoes sockless), which I'm still getting used to, and which still need to undergo some distance testing once I've healed enough.

with the bandages peeled back

In this final pic below—maybe you can see this, and maybe you can't—I have a closeup of the exposed dermis, which seems to be clouding over, i.e., there may already be the first tentative bits of new epidermis reaching across that opening so as to seal everything up again. I hope that that's what's happening, anyway. It could be that I'm just seeing things.

In the meantime, the care routine continues: bandages are changed twice daily, and before the second change, done in the evening when I get back from work, I still soak my foot in Epsom salt. While I eventually need to expose the new skin to air and let it dry out and toughen, the salt soaks help with the healing and have a slight antibiotic effect, purging the exposed area of bacteria. (I ran out of my prescribed antibiotics this past Sunday; I might go get more.) On random days, I also rub the skin down with something painful, like rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. This isn't like the situation with the diabetic ulcer from a couple years ago; I'm not impeding any healing because the dermis isn't broken. Besides: after the salt-soak and the alcohol/peroxide treatments, I always pat the foot dry before applying new bandages.

Does the dermis look to be clouding over to you? It doesn't look as moist and raw as it did when I'd just gotten back from Daegu. Behold:

I think healing has reached the final stage.

Expect another report this Friday if not before.

Friday-night foot

My original plan was to restart the walk today, the 9th, and to walk only on weekends. If you've been keeping up with the blog, though—and I know you have—you know that I changed that plan to restarting on November 30, which means busing out to the Hong-C Motel in Daegu on the evening of the 29th and walking the rest of my calendar straight through (but with the calendar's rest days still in place to minimize the risk of reinjury). Eleven days on the trail; eight days of walking and three days of resting after 30-plus-kilometer segments.

It's a good thing I decided to go with that plan. Below are pics of my right foot's injury as of Friday night. There was actual bleeding (I think), something I haven't seen for days. I wonder if the bleeding is at all related to the new shoes. The new shoes, by the way, generally feel comfortable but not stellar. I'm not blown away by them, but then again, I haven't taken them for a substantial walk yet. I am, however, impressed by the wider, more breathable toe boxes.

As you look through the pics, though, you'll note that the foot's injury (I still refuse to call it a "wound" since the dermis isn't open anywhere obvious) has really healed up. I've posted a link, below, to the photo of the original injury for comparison.

typical: I've soaked through the sock yet again

I had also changed one factor: because I'd been oozing only clear fluid for days, and because the ooze had been abating somewhat, I switched from two layers of bandages to only a single layer. After seeing this mess, though, I've switched back, and it'll probably be two layers from now until the thing is totally healed.

And here's the injury in all its glory, but mostly healed:

From this post: here's the fresh injury, dead skin cut off, for comparison. See how much has grown back?

The healed skin will be soft for a while; some light walking ought to help toughen it up, not to mention exposure to the air instead of constant covering with ointment-infused bandages. Ideally, the skin needs to be dry and fairly hard by the time I start walking again.

That said, this new bleeding, after days of clear fluid, is disappointing:

Oddly, the bleeding (if that's what this is) seems to be coming from the "top" of the injury. I have no idea what that implies for my foot care, aside from Don't walk on that part.

Another week ought to showcase even more healing, so expect another set of gross photos on Friday the 15th. I do what I can to keep your appetite up. There's another two weeks of healing after that, and given how far things have come over the past two weeks, I really ought to be healed by the end of the month. If the skin is still too tender, I'll be sure to gauze up to relieve pressure. I now have shoes that give me more room for gauze.

More soon. Keep checking back.

new walking shoes

The walking/running shoes you see below were recommended by several experts I saw on YouTube. A lot of praise went to the shoes' wide toe boxes, as well as to their arch support. I've been wearing them to work for the past few days, but once I'm healed up enough, I need to taken them on some longer walks to break them in. No more Skechers, I guess, and I'm back to having laces, but I still have the nasty habit of slipping my shoes on and off without worrying about the laces.

just out of the packaging

US size 13 wide (I wanted black, but Amazon didn't have my size in that color)

I'm not actually a size 13: I'm closer to an 11, but my feet have definitely spread a bit from all of the walking, and 11s and 12s are just too tight across my feet.

These shoes, at least for the moment, feel comfortable. Once I start distance walking again, I'll find out all sorts of things about pressure points, etc.

on my feet

The laces are a bit too long, so I'll have to figure out a better way of tying my shoes. I'm sure YouTube is full of tutorials by people with weird accents.

new walk plan & the restarting of training

I had a chance to think about my walk schedule, and I can see that my foot is definitely not going to be ready for travel this coming Saturday the 9th. Then it hit me: the boss needs me in the office to finish our current project (Book 3 in a series of English workbooks) by the end of November; it's also unwontedly warm despite it now being November; I also started looking into the complicated transportation issue that comes with picking up where I left off every damn weekend, so I thought to myself that it might be a better idea just to delay the start of the walk until Friday, November 29: I could take a bus back to Daegu's Hyeonpoong Public Bus Station, stay overnight at the Hong-C Motel, and start out the next morning, doing the rest of the walk in one fell swoop instead of busing/training out every single weekend. This would also have the advantage of letting me continue to heal without interruption (if I did the weekends-only schedule, I'd be setting back my healing a bit every time I went out to walk), and I could even do a few trial walks during the final two weeks of November. So: continuous healing, no unnecessary bus/trains for every segment, ability to work on this work project until the end of November, and—assuming the unusually warm weather holds until late in the month—no deep cold as we move into December (snow or ice would likely kill the walk in its tracks).

I revised my walk calendar. See here or look below:

11/30 (Sat.): Daegu Hong-C to the Daegu If Hotel (25K)

12/1 (Sun.): Daegu If Hotel to Chilgok Lee Motel (33K)

12/2 (Mon.): overnight stay (rest & recuperate)

12/3 (Tue.): Lee Motel to Gumi City Libertar Pension (32K)

12/4 (Wed.): overnight stay (rest & recuperate)

12/5 (Thu.): Libertar to Sangju City Havana Motel (23K)

12/6 (Fri.): Havana to Sangju Bobos Motel (25K)

12/7 (Sat.): Bobos to Gyeongbuk Yecheon-gun Jibo-myeon Daeseon Motel (36K)

12/8 (Sun.): overnight stay (rest & recuperate)

12/9 (Mon.): Daeseon to Andong City Songhak Motel (30K)

12/10 (Tue.): Songhak to Andong Dam (27K)

So the rest days are back in. I'll essentially be walking the remaining 11 days of the original 20-day calendar, but delayed by a few weeks thanks to this injury. I might also have to bring along a somewhat bigger, heavier jacket that's almost a coat... or I might not. A lot depends on what regional temperatures are like. Frankly, I hope I can get away with toting along what I'd had originally: my light windbreaker and a poncho, the two of which, when used together (and assuming it's not rainy), provide plenty of warmth when it's cold. I guess the real concern is the early mornings, when it might be freezing out in the sticks where there's no urban waste heat.

I think I'm also going to get back into stairs training starting this week, but nowhere near as intensely as at the beginning of this year. I'll just go Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, either at night or in the early morning, and once my foot heals enough, I'll start some limited walking so as to stay in condition. If I can force my lazy ass to do so, I'll also do a bit of biking just for the cardio benefit. Whether I restart heavy clubs, kettlebells, etc. before the end of the year is an open question. Maybe; maybe not. We'll see how lazy I'm feeling.

Here's hoping 2025 is a much better year. This one's been a bit abusive.

healing

There's been progress in my foot's healing. Compare the two photos below. The first is from 10/25, and the second is from yesterday (10/31):

as of October 25, just after coming back to my place to recuperate

Halloween, a day ago

While it still hurts a bit to walk on that open dermis (yes, I slather on ointment and bandage it up twice a day), and the exposed area still likes to weep clear fluid (no blood), the skin is obviously a lot better than when I'd just come back. I'm not sure whether I'll be ready to go on November 9 at this rate, and I'm prepared to delay a week more if necessary. I think November 16 ought to do it, what with the skin so obviously closing up again. I'll keep the area clean; salt baths, however, will eventually have to stop in favor of letting the wound dry in the open air. Moisture is ultimately the enemy, keeping the sole's skin too soft for long walks. And as long as there's an angry red patch in the middle, not even a tape-over with gauze and Leukotape will prevent re-injury should I try to walk while my foot is like that. I can guarantee, though, that even when the foot is healed, I'm going to be a lot more Leukotape-happy this time around. Luckily, by switching to the weekend-only format, the foot will continue to heal between walking sessions. I may have to buy a lot of gauze in preparation, though: the reason such sores form to begin with has everything to do with friction and pressure.

At present, my new schedule (also visible here) looks like this:

11/9 (Sat.): Daegu Hong-C Motel to Daegu If Hotel (25K)
11/10 (Sun.): Daegu If Motel to Chilgok-gun Lee Motel (33K)
11/16 (Sat.): Chilgok-gun Lee Motel to Libertar Pension (32K)
11/23 (Sat.): Libertar Pension to Sangju Havana Motel (23K)

11/24 (Sun.): Sangju Havana Motel to Sangju Bobos Motel (25K, by the terminal)

11/30 (Sat.): Sangju Bobos Motel to Yecheon-gun Jibo-myeon Daeseon Motel (36K)

12/7 (Sat.): Daeseon Motel to Andong City, Songhak Motel (30K)

12/8 (Sun.): Songhak Motel to Andong Dam (27K)

I bolded 11/30 for two reasons: (1) that's the longest segment on the route after the 40K segment that killed my foot, and (2) it marks the point where I turn from the Four Rivers trail (which would lead me to Incheon) to the Nakdong River trail, which goes east to Andong. I've never stayed at the Bobos Motel before, but next to the bus terminal is a motel-rich area, so I'll have no problem finding a place to stay. I've stayed at Daeseon before, but not the Songhak (last time, it was the Da-u), so this will also be a new experience. If something isn't to my liking though, and if there's another nearby place to stay, I'll simply move over to that place. The final day ought to be pretty straightforward.

There's going to be a real temptation, if my foot heals nicely, to ask my boss whether I can just do the rest of the walk straight through. But that would risk re-injury, and besides, the boss has me working on another project at the office since his understanding is that I'll be walking only on weekends starting on the 9th.

You'll have noticed that, for some of the weekends listed above, I'm walking only on Saturday, whereas there are other weekends when I'll be walking on Sunday. The reason should be obvious: if the Saturday walk is over 30K, I don't want to risk re-injuring myself on the Sunday walk. So 11/16 is Saturday only, and 11/30 is definitely Saturday only.

So there we have it: foot healing proceeds apace, and the above is my schedule past Pearl Harbor Day. I'll so what photo-uploading, enlarging, captioning, and commenting I can during the week between sessions. In theory, I'll be done before New Year's.

More soon! As I get closer to departure time, I'll have weather reports.

while I sit on my ass

I'm in rest mode right now, staying off my foot while I fast this weekend (well, "fast," anyway), but I'm going to start uploading all the shots on my phone for the first nine days I was out on the trail. I'd walked for only six of those nine days, but that puts me almost halfway through the calendar, with only 200-some kilometers to go to complete the trail. In the meantime, I'll upload a bunch of pics over the coming days, enlarge them, caption them, and add extra commentary. When I'm back on the trail, since I'll have a week between segments, I'll do what I can on weekdays to upload all the new pics. I might have a complete walk blog before the year is up! And wouldn't that be nice for once?

Day 9a, Leg 6

We're stuck on Leg 6, I guess, until I take up the walk again on November 9. I've been home since about noon today, and I rejiggered my schedule per what I'd said yesterday: weekends only from now on, but only after a two-week rest period. Today: a foot wash, an Epsom-salt bath (a luxury I can't have on the trail), a re-application of blood-stopper powder (the stuff doesn't control all the bleeding the first time around), a re-dressing of my foot injury (see the lovely photos below), then I'm off my feet for the rest of the day.

I got back to my apartment at around 11:50 a.m. today after a 7:50 a.m. departure by bus. Pretty uneventful bus ride, all in all: it was long enough that there was a rest stop about halfway through the trip. I went to the restroom, ate a sausage-on-a-stick (which was more or less keto) and a corn dog (which wasn't), and slept awkwardly in my seat most of the way home. Bought myself some Paris Baguette salads for lunch, looked at and photographed my foot injury (you'll love it), then puzzled over why I wasn't able to leave replying comments to comments on this blog... until I restarted the computer, and everything ran smoothly.

a shot of the creek from yesterday as I was limping back from the pharmacy in Hyeonpoong, Daegu

today's early walk out to the bus station, around 6:10 a.m., with Jupiter presiding over a next-door building

The moon through wires; at almost exactly 3 o'clock from the moon is Mars.

I think this says, "I planted a flower of hope, and a flower of life blossomed." Blandly beautiful.

a gate that I would see up close later that morning

One of the final shwimteo before going back to my place... look at all the chairs!

a sign for the bus station I was heading to; got a ticket there yesterday

At the bus station, a staffer saw me hesitating at the ticket machine, which wasn't set up the way the ones in Seoul were. I was trying to find where I could select the departure date; the machine seemed to have selected the same day (i.e., yesterday). The staffer came over, and we talked about when I wanted to go: the following morning, as early as possible. The staffer tapped the touch screen, and I finally saw where the "select date" button was. I inserted my debit card; the ticket was spat out, and that was that. I thanked the staffer for his help.

the final rise to the bus stop/station, located near the top of a hill

my bench, by Bus Berth #1

The early morning was actually cold. I put on my windbreaker, which is better for such things than for protecting me from rain.

Hyeonpoong Public Bus Stop

My ticket, paradoxically described as "first class" (우등/udeung) and "general" (일반/ilban). I think the "first class" part refers to the bus's being a limousine bus. The "general" probably refers to the seat itself.

close enough to Daegu proper to see the pollution haze common to big cities

looking east-ish

the face of defeat... but I'll be back on November 9

That wedge-looking monument had been bothering me since I first saw it, partially obscured, upon my arrival in town. It was at the top of the same hill the bus station was on. I went up.

A lot of painful limping to get up the stairs, but I got up.

ascent

a look back at the bus station from an elevated position

The stairs gave way to a switchbacking track... maybe to fool bikers into thinking they could bike down.

that damn wedge in the distance, just beyond the trees

It's called Choong-hon Tap. Technically, a tap is a pagoda, but it can refer to many things that suggest a tower, like a cairn of stacked rocks on a trail or a large, vertical monument. The hon comes from yeonghon, or "soul/spirit." I guessed that the choong in Choong-hon was the same choong in the famous Korean-military shout of Choong seong!, Korea's answer to Semper fi! (semper fidelis = always faithful, the US Marines). Choong by itself means "loyalty" or "faithfulness"; Choong seong means something closer to "allegiance," i.e., faithfulness or loyalty to a king or country—to someone or something bigger than oneself. So it's almost literally semper fi. At this point, my guess was that this was a military monument. It wasn't lost on me that the monument's placement was such that it appeared to have taken the hill.

Just a tourist approaching in the early morning.

Maybe some mowing and weed-whacking around that bench, guys...?

Wedges and dagger-like shapes are common design features of military monuments.

Some areas have apparently been taped off.

flagpole and flag

If you blow the image up, you see 충혼당/choonghon-dang over the door. I think the Chinese for this is 忠魂堂/충혼당/choonghon-dang, or Hall of the Spirit of Allegiance. My dad used to take us to a yearly performance by the US Army of something called The Spirit of America, a pageant and performance meant to show off the US Army's history and evolution, as well as to be a paean to what the Army stands for. I can imagine my liberal friends rolling their eyes and seeing this only as propaganda that papers over our military's failures and misdeeds, so what would those friends say now that they know more about what this monument represents?

I should probably look at this bas-relief from a better angle.

kind of facing the dawn

That's not grenades and explosions on the right: those are mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon), the ROK's national flower.

It's not a very big monument, but it's in a prominent spot.

that gate I saw while I was still below

The front. Something's being repaired or renovated or installed.

same guys facing east, now seen from the front

best angle

and another bas-relief

and a different sculpture with a different trio

the stairs down (or up) for the hardy folks

The gate from the front. I had to do a 0.5 zoom to capture the whole thing. The Chinese characters here, unlike at a Buddhist temple or a Confucian seoweon, look to be read from left to right: choongeui-mun  (忠義門), or the Gate of Loyalty and Integrity. (One translation, anyway.)

The sun will be popping up right about... there. 7:09 a.m. Gotta get back down to the bus station soon.

trees to be planted

a side monument: mu gong su hoon ja hoe—Military Merit Award Society
(thank or blame Google Translate)

back down, now, to catch a bus

Erigeron annuus, or the daisy fleabane

The stairs... they go up.

Avert your eyes now if you don't want to see my exposed flesh! You've been warned.

This doesn't look so bad, but...

That's looking rather raw and frog-leggy. And no, you're not seeing any exposed bone.

I have a feeling the Epsom-salt soak is going to hurt.

To keep from oozing into my shoe, I again wrapped my dressed foot in a plastic bag from a convenience store. I may have to double-bag from now on, though, because for the second time, the act of walking short distances was enough to wear a hole into the bag, thus defeating its purpose. Lucky for me, there's a skin clinic across the hall from where I work. I've been meaning to visit the clinic for years to see whether I've picked up any skin cancer from all of these walks, but this injury, only skin-deep, seems to be much more immediate and serious. So I'll see the clinic on Monday. They're gonna love the smell.

Well, I guess there's a first time for everything, and after seven previous walks, all of which involved a degree of pain, I've finally run up against a walk that has defeated me. Just looking at that wound, though, with its oozings and pustulations, makes me think I've made the right choice to let the foot heal. One risk with going to the skin clinic is that the ladies there might decide I need to rest for three weeks, not two, which would force me to change my walking schedule (click my itinerary, linked above, and scroll down to see the revised calendar). I'm also worried that being off my feet, more or less, for two weeks will cause me to detrain, so I'll have to increase the staircase work and see about getting on my bike to at least keep the cardio up, if not the conditioning. What's upsetting this time around is that, as happened three years ago after my stroke, I started the walk much lighter, leading me to believe I'd avoid most of the wear and tear that come from carrying too much weight. This time, though, as I speculated earlier, a confluence of factors militated to take me out of the game. Let me spend today being sulky and depressed, then I'll pick up the exercise/health/healing regime again tomorrow.

This walk isn't over. As my boss half-joked, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't complete the route before the end of this year. 2024 sucked, overall, but I can at least finish it semi-well.

UPDATE: I finally cut away the dead skin:

oozing but not bleeding

The skin wasn't doing much except to trap water and body fluids like blood and blister ooze, so it had to go.

another angle, different lighting

slight swelling of the right foot from a little infection

The infection isn't acute. I'm keeping it at bay until Monday, when I can be prescribed antibiotics by the skin clinic (which, frankly, might just refer me to my doctor at the internal-medicine clinic in the opposite corner of the building where I work). Nothing more than a small swelling—no redness or gangrene around the wound or on the whole foot, no fever, no rotten smell (the sea-salt bath took care of the musty, wrapped-in-a-plastic-bag odor; I'll do two more baths tomorrow). I also bought larger bandages to cover the wound (if exposed dermis qualifies as a wound), and I applied more blood-stopper powder, which I'll be leaving on as I sleep, to stop the weeping.