So I am not really sure how my endeavour with heels began, but I admit that I have gotten exponentially worse over the past few years.
When I first started, I only dappled in the pool of short chunky heels and slight wedges, occasionally higher heels for parties, and for a moment when I started clinical school, I abandoned the whole thought of heels completely because of 1) The embarrassing moment of click-clicking down the hallway and everyone turning to look at you and 2) The inability to even limp home after a day of running around the hospital in heels.
Then I discovered something called vanity.
And when I started working full time as a doctor, I discovered that the only salvation I found from my daily routine of being told off left, right and corner and the stress of juggling 30 odd patient lives on your own in a day was making myself feel good by dressing up as best as I could. Call me crazy, but the only human contact I had who could appreciate my sense of style was largely in the hospital.
Then my self conscience started growing with the number of comments about my dressing and it reached a stage where it was embarrassing not to keep up my 'standard' of fashion because this was expected of me without question. That was when I discovered that when you were only 5'4", the only way to look good in outfits was when they were worn with heels.
So I started progressing back from flats to short wedges to shorter heels, to medium-height wedges. And with that it seemed, so did my pain threshold for running around the hospital while learning how to balance gracefully at this height.
But today when I decided to embrace the whole holiday year-end festive season and dress my lace pencil skirt and peplum top with 4 inch high colour-blocked wedges for a haphazard Gastro ward round traipsing around the hospital, I decided that I might have crossed the line.
I managed to limp, yes limp....home at 7 pm that day after having done a ward round of 16 new patients around entirely different ends of the hospital, inserted an ascitic drain, run back and forth to Radiology and whacked a grey cannula into an actively bleeding patient.
I might have pushed my luck too far this time.
About time for this fashionista to admit defeat before I find myself paying the Orthopod a visit in the very near future.
