After a harsh winter and suffering from corns, calluses and dry feet, a ‘medi pedi’ treatment came to my rescue
M
y feet were screaming for mercy. Apologies for the following description, but after New York City’s deep-freeze winter, I had corns between my toes, thick callus pads beneath my big toes, and scaly dry lines all around my foot and up my leg. Both my heels had split, with deep cracks in multiple places; I had been super-gluing the flesh closed to prevent them from splitting further. Walking had become excruciating.
Honestly, it was a mess down there. My feet had reached a point of no return. Vaseline would sit on top of the skin without getting absorbed. Filing my heels in the shower felt dangerous (remember – open wounds). In addition, my pinkie toes have always been capped with thick, darkened nails that I thought were probably fungus. Antifungal formulas had zero success.
So when I was scrolling through Reddit recently, one particular post intrigued me: “Who is Scrubbing Feet in NYC,” wrote the poster. “I have seriously dry feet. And I HATE going to salons where they just tap my feet and move on [instead of sloughing off dead skin].” In the comments, several users recommended a medical pedicure at Aire, a podiatry practice in the Upper East Side. It costs $150, someone wrote, but can count towards a health insurance deductible. I clicked over to the website, saw that the clinic would accept payments via my health savings account, and I made an appointment right then.
