Sutured Sandal

Friday one of my green leather flip-flops broke. This, of course, had to happen 10 minutes after I arrived on campus on a day when I’m stuck in class until 5pm.

As I walked about with one shoe on and one shoe off, a few laughed, but no one had anything I could sew it back with. Thinking on my feet (pun intended) I went to the nurse’s office for some bandage wrap. The nurse must have thought that I was nuts for wanting to bandage my flip-flop, but I taped it up anyway.

Several more laughed and thought I should toss my broken shoe, but I hobbled about campus for the rest of the day. Today, as I lounged by my pool, it occurred to me that I could fix my shoe.

I called upstairs to Jossie, who brought down part of our surgery pack (that we’ve gotten in preparation for 6th semester). I selected a suture pack thingy with black thread then went into my pack to search for my needle holder.

Keep in mind, I haven’t sutured since the break, and even when I did, I was terrible… little animals beware! I started to sew my shoe back to it’s base. First a square knot to hold it in place, then loop after loop to get it fixed. Great idea since the needle was curved and the leather was rough, as I would never have been able to complete such a task with a standard needle and thread.

So I tied the mess off and it seems to be holding quite nicely. In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to the writing on the packet; I hope I didn’t use dissolving suture!