I don’t have a clue how I managed to get a small blister on one of my toes. However, handling blisters is something I learned about many years ago. I’ve mentioned before that I wear a size 4.5 shoe. Those of us in South Florida joke about dreading to go places where we need closed-toe shoes again, and in my case it has extra meaning. I  can wear a size 5 in open-toe shoes which doesn’t give me a huge amount of choices when I go into a store, but I can find some. And as with other things in the world of on-line shopping, there are other sources. Finding combat boots to fit was an entirely different matter.

One of the issues of being a “pioneering female” was a lack of “off-sizes” whether one was very short or very  tall when it came to Army uniforms. That was especially true when I was taking ROTC and time came for our first in-the-woods exercise (that means simulated combat). The best they could do for me was a size 6, but hey, a couple of pairs of thick socks should help. That probably would have been true for only walking around. Tromping up and down in the woods for hours, and being Louisiana there was swampy ground involved, meant the end result of multiple large blisters, on both feet and ankles, some of which broke before I had a chance to get the boots off. The pain was indeed noticeable, but it was the persistent redness and swelling around the scabbed over flesh that finally caused me to go see the doctor. She took one look as I explained what happened and sighed at my lack of understanding. In giving me the prescription for antibiotics, she said I was close enough to blood poisoning that she wanted me back in the office in two days if the redness wasn’t diminishing. All did heal properly and there was a similar incident years later due to a ten-mile road march, but that’s another story. Oh, the Army did finally begin to make boots down to a size 4.