Covid Toes

At the end of January/beginning of February, Jon's toes on one foot started to bother him. They were red, kind of itchy, and would hurt if he put too much weight on them. We weren't really sure what was going on, but figured it was probably a weird thing that would pass quickly. 

But then it spread to the other foot. His toes became purple and swollen. And his feet would hurt at night, so much that he couldn't sleep. He decided to try staying off them entirely for a day to see if that helped, which it did. But crawling around is not comfortable for very long, so he upgraded to rolling around in office chairs. He had one on the main level, and one upstairs.

Jon putting dishes away in his office chair.

Elijah loved "Roomba Dad" and was very helpful pushing him around to random spots.

After some Googling, Jon decided that he had Covid Toes, which is a thing that can happen to people who are exposed and are either asymptomatic or have very mild cases. He went to get tested (several times) and all came back negative, which was weird and annoying. But apparently that was fairly common with Covid Toes--they would only find signs of Covid-19 when doing a biopsy on the skin of the foot. So crazy. 

So, best guess: we were all exposed in Arizona and Jon got just enough to trigger a really weird reaction, but not enough to test positive or show any symptoms. None of the rest of us had symptoms either. 

And so we waited, because what else can you do? Most people with Covid Toes had it subside in 1-2 weeks. When Jon got to week 3, I was starting to despair. He did what he could to help, but you can't really do the dishes or put kids to bed when you can't walk. He spent a lot of his evenings sitting on his throne:

During all this he was asked to give a talk in church. Original plan was that I would just read it for him, but I persuaded him to just give a talk like a person in a wheelchair does: sitting on the stand with a microphone. 

And then, miraculously, it just...got better. Like within three days he went from totally unable to put weight on his feet to running around. I was so grateful because some people had it for months! I always think I appreciate everything Jon does, but it's so much more obvious when he can't do all the little things anymore. 

(Update: in case we had any lingering doubts whether Covid was the culprit, guess who had another bout of Covid Toes after the second vaccine shot? Thankfully it was very mild and very short-lived!).