Friday, April 23, 2004
I wasn't able to run last Friday or Saturday, so when I got home Sunday I went out and did my long loop: up Delaware to the park, around the Ring Road and out to Nottingham, behind the Historical Society, up the Hill then down Elmwood. It felt pretty good after the long drive, but Monday, walking off the plane, down the jetway I had a twinge, a sort of sharp, stabbing pain in the big toe of my left foot. "What's this?" I thought. I'd avoided injury last Spring by prophylactic self-administration of anti-inflamatories, but I can't get anyone to prescribe them for me now. (Dr. Z is surprisingly hard-assed about this sort of thing. He wouldn't approve HGH either, and I can foresee a problem with palliative marijuana if that time ever comes. Who'd have thought it?)
Medical students sometimes develop the symptoms of the pathologies they are studying, and I am far from immune to this: when I try a case involving a back injury, for example, I often find myself hobbled with back pain. You can't call it sympathy pain exactly: as a rule I am on the defense side, arguing that the pathetic crippled plaintiff should rub some dirt on it and get on with his life. I don't think of myself as a hypochondriac, but I have to confess that tendonitis was not what I was thinking about for the rest of the day, as I flexed and extended the toe, trying to see what made it hurt, and how much I could make it hurt. "If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras," is what they say, but I was worried about gout anyway. I'd look good in a smoking jacket with my foot on a silk ottoman to be sure, but I'm really not ready for the most luxurious (and painful) of the joint diseases, even if I have earned it.
Fortunately my travel schedule this week meant that I was not able to put in many miles, and my complaints seem to have responded to rest and ibuprofen. I'm looking forward to the Ridge this weekend.
Medical students sometimes develop the symptoms of the pathologies they are studying, and I am far from immune to this: when I try a case involving a back injury, for example, I often find myself hobbled with back pain. You can't call it sympathy pain exactly: as a rule I am on the defense side, arguing that the pathetic crippled plaintiff should rub some dirt on it and get on with his life. I don't think of myself as a hypochondriac, but I have to confess that tendonitis was not what I was thinking about for the rest of the day, as I flexed and extended the toe, trying to see what made it hurt, and how much I could make it hurt. "If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras," is what they say, but I was worried about gout anyway. I'd look good in a smoking jacket with my foot on a silk ottoman to be sure, but I'm really not ready for the most luxurious (and painful) of the joint diseases, even if I have earned it.
Fortunately my travel schedule this week meant that I was not able to put in many miles, and my complaints seem to have responded to rest and ibuprofen. I'm looking forward to the Ridge this weekend.
