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How Medical Reality Shows Help Me Escape Medical Reality
Graphic surgery videos became my Covid comfort food
There’s nothing like a global pandemic to make you start paying attention to your own body, and bodies in general, in a whole new way. Devoid of all stimulus except for media consumption, I’ve spent much of the last year and a half looking for things to watch that distract me from the current state of the world. So it’s a smoky summer afternoon in Nevada, the pandemic has been raging for who knows how long at this point, and I’m lazing in my soft bed, looking to decompress. My ideal television for this era must adhere to the following criteria: it does not require 100% of my attention (i.e. I can glance at Instagram without losing the entire thread); it nevertheless has to have a compelling dramatic arc; and lastly, it’s at least a little bit gnarly. As of late, the show that checks all these boxes is TLC’s My Feet Are Killing Me.
The reality show follows three podiatric surgeons as they help people who have the most fucked up foot and ankle problems imaginable. In the episode I’m watching this afternoon, we meet a man who has ruptured his Achilles tendon; a woman who has such a bad bunion, her big toe is bending at almost a ninety degree angle, so it’s touching her third toe; and a man with the most extreme plantar fibromas, hard lumps…
