Cinderella at the Podiatrist

She comes in wearing a pair of glass heels so high and pointed, they’re obscene. Eases them off and even I, a professional, have a hard time not recoiling. And honestly I think that maybe she should see me reacting: bunions for days, the worst hammertoe I've seen. Mrs. Charming, I say.  You cannot keep wearing shoes like this. Look at you. You must be in pain. She doesn’t deny it. She says I don’t understand. She says she’s got to wear them. It's her thing, it’s how she and her husband got together, and if she stops wearing the glass slippers, well, she thinks maybe it’s the one thing holding her marriage together at this point, this homage to their meet-cute. She looks me in the eye and says, I’m not an idiot. I know my feet aren't great. That's why I'm here. You’ve got to help me, doctor. What can I do? Glass insoles? Surgery? I prescribe her opioids and she gives me a third of the kingdom.

Rapunzel Gets Referred to the Endocrinologist

Why does my hair grow like this, she wants to know. Her primary care provider blinks. It's not like medicine on television; real doctors don't seem to care about medical mysteries, they only care about solving problems they recognize, starting with the most dangerous ones and running down the list from there. Her provider is thinking about the trash fire that is their 11 o'clock’s simultaneous heart failure exacerbation and diabetic ketoacidosis. Too much hair? It's like a fake TikTok problem, a humble brag. I mean, is it bothering you? The third doctor she goes to asks, the most forthright one, the one who finally puts the pieces of their collective disregard together for her. Can't you just keep cutting it? Rapunzel tells him it’s fine, she can live with it, but shouldn’t she get some kind of testing…? There is no testing. But what if it's a sign of something else, part of an unusual disease, a dangerous over-proliferation of cells? Rapunzel stumbles on the word proliferation and the provider glares at her and doesn’t even bother to chastise her for googling. Does she have any other symptoms, he asks, and the tone is so discouraging of reply that it takes a minute to register that it is a question. No. No body aches, no joint pain, no skin rashes or digestive issues. She is a little anxious. She has mother issues. A loathing of anything higher than the ground floor, claustrophobia and her difficulty trusting people: is it trauma, or is it all part of some unnamed medical syndrome? The doctor refers her to an endocrinologist. No one knows why her hair grows like this, and no one particularly cares. Rapunzel joins a Facebook group for people whose hormones are imbalanced in unnamed ways, and when the balm of trading messages about unclassifiable maladies is not enough, she scrolls through ranch style houses on Zillow.