Best Thing After 10 Hours on My Feet

6 min read

The last hour

By hour nine on the warehouse floor, every step is a negotiation. I am the team leader, which means I walk further than everyone else while looking like I am not tired, a skill no one warns you about. Fourteen thousand steps a shift, the counter says. The counter is not the one who has to walk the kelpies when she gets home.

Boots off at the door. The dogs stare with their full-body judgement. There used to be a whole performance to what came next: gel packs from the freezer that did not fit, ice in zip-locks that slid off, tea towels everywhere, all while standing over the kitchen bench too tired to cook. It was a second shift, that routine, just colder and wetter.

At one point I tried keeping a bag of peas strapped to my calf with a sock. The result is better imagined than described. I found it mid-sentence at work the next day.

The thing that ended it

Mick, from receiving, 51 years old, calves of a man half his age, mentioned at smoko that he used a compression sleeve at home. Slides on like a sock, lives in the freezer, done. He said it the way you would mention a good brand of hammer, and I was too tired and too proud to ask more questions, so I stewed on it for a week until my calves made the decision for me.

I bought one. Cold/Hot Compression Sleeve, $89.95 for the Large that Mick said suits calf, knee and elbow.

It is the difference between a second shift and no shift at all.

Hour eleven, redefined

I get home, grab the sleeve from the freezer, slide it on before I even put the kettle on. It takes seconds. The kelpies watch with confusion, then acceptance. Ten minutes while I sort out dinner and they sort out my feet, and the whole thing is finished before the kettle has properly boiled. It is cold, it is firm, it stays exactly where the calves need it, and it does not leak, slip, or leave a wet trail through the kitchen. I have spent evenings trying to engineer what this sleeve does by default.

The warehouse will still be there tomorrow, and my calves will be ready for it.

Mick was not wrong, and neither was the week I spent stewing on it before I bought mine.

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