Putting your best 脚 jiǎo forward.

At first,  it just felt like a pebble in my shoe. No big deal. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, try it felt like an abscessed tooth migrated to the ball of my foot.

Ouch!

Now I understand why they shoot horses.

It’s something called Morton’s Neuroma, a thickening of the skin around a nerve between two toes,  common in women my age who have worn high heels to high powered meetings during their career. Or in my case, by someone who’s put about 10,000 miles on her favorite pair of hiking boots.

Whatever the cause, I have a major pain in my ? ji?o.

Which means,  it ‘s time to find an acupuncturist.

But these needle experts in China are old school. They use thick needles, want to see your tongue and wave around a heated stick of with a mugwort, which smells about as bad as it sounds.  The acupuncturist I’ll see works with lepers and knows about as much English as I know Swahili.

But instead of showing up at the appointment with my insurance card and co-pay, I’m giving her a copy of this:

I went to a medical website and copied  their description of Morton’s Foot into the almighty Bing Translator.

But the translating didn’t stop there.

I had to translate it back into English to make sure it made sense. After all, my name means Pure and Peaceful Hamburger after it goes through a few online mandarin grinders. Who knows what a small ailment of the foot might turn into.

Well actually, I do. It reads:

Not a neuroma possibly can think if you are stand in a boulder bed in yours shoe, or folds on yours sock.
Not a neuroma involves to each place being in the lead to a yours toe nerve organization accumulation.This possibly can cause one incisively, burns in yours sole ache.

Well, I don’t have Not a neuroma. I have Morton’s.

Then I tried one of my favorite online Chinese Translators,  MBDG. It didn’t lose much of the original meaning, but it did raise a red flag with my internal grammar Nazi.

So hopefully, my acupuncturist can help. And hopefully, she’ll use clean needles after treating the lepers.

Until then, the guys at the blind massage can help me out.

They even have the internet where I can access even better translations.