Overdone

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! It is finally nice outside (for only a day, though).

It was finally nice outside yesterday. My wife decreed that everyone had to be outside for a majority of the day except for bathroom breaks. We’d been cooped up inside for far too long.  Everyone fell in line, even the dog. After a short walk up to the post office and some sailing (garage sale weekend in town) we returned home, unleashed our dog and he got the zoomies, like a mug. The weather had pumped him up. He began running around the backyard kicking up mud and grass like a thoroughbred racehorse. His Devin Hester-like cuts aren’t as sharp as they used to be, but merely calling him spry is an insult. He’s still a badass at 14-years-old. However, he is unable to recover like he used to and we tried to corral him to save himself from injury. The old hound’s endurance isn’t what it used to be so it didn’t take long to wrangle him and he eventually calmed down. Unfortunately for him, he was toast the rest of the day. By six o’clock while we were enjoying our first meal of the year outside on the patio, he was barking at us, not for scraps, but to go inside and lay down on a sofa. He’s still feeling it today. 

You’d think since I know the limitations of my dog I’d have a pretty good handle of my own, but I don’t. I still think I’m invincible. I know I’m not, but even as I write this I know I’d still be of some use in fist fight. I’m confident that I could land a few good blows before being destroyed. I used to annihilate my body when I was younger back in my skateboarding days. I don’t know if it was an addiction to adrenaline, but I loved going all-out knowing I’d heal. I once threw myself down a handrail over 80 times like a rag doll just to get that fix and I left bruised, bloodied, and unsuccessful, but determined to return when my body had healed. Hell, it took me 36 years until I broke my first bone, pelvis, and I didn’t even do it to myself. I was awesome. 

Then that accident happened and I learned my body is vulnerable.

After dinner the dog went inside to retire to the basement while the kid, wife and I played some kickball, pitcher’s hand rule, of course. During my first at-bat I crushed that rubber playground ball so hard that not only did I lose my slip-on shoe in the blast created by my leg’s tremendous display of force, but I cleared the bases so fast that I decided to clear them again for a second run, still with only one shoe on. It didn’t stop there. I kept going at Mach 6.72. I told my wife that my heart was pounding so hard that if I collapse, please make sure to add that I died doing what I loved in my obituary, WINNING!

I woke up to a dreary Sunday morning. It’s raining, much cooler than yesterday and I’m currently listening to Terri Hemmert’s Breakfast with the Beatles show on the radio like a retiree. My body is sore. Like the dog, I’m toast. My CRPS is flaring. I over did it. Soon I’ll retire to the basement sofa to join the dog and probably watch the Bulls get their asses handed to them again. Sucks that I’m not invincible. I’ve accepted that, but I’m still a badass. 

Block and/or Charge?

It is Good Friday, from Chinatown!

Today we headed down to the city to visit my pain doctor at Rush because I’ve been experiencing pain in my lower back for a few months. We gave ourselves an hour and forty-five minutes to get there and we were five minutes late due to an emergency potty-break and an accident on the Eisenhower near Harlem. At the peak of my gridlock stress as we inched forward I think I uttered, “JUST FUCKING GO ALREADY! I can’t stand this shit. Goddamnit!” Suffice to say, I don’t care much for traffic. 

Anyway, we made it and when I finally answered to the receptionist, nurse, and resident doctor, I was finally reunited with my doctor. Our masked faces met and our eyes locked. I heard a piano, Hello by Adele began to play inside my head. Being the professional my doctor is and the fact that we weren’t alone in my room — my wife, kid, Abbott representative, doctor-in-training, and some other guy asking for my doc’s signature during my appointment (how rude) — we got down to business. 

Yes doctor, I fell [for you]. Oh, lay down on the gurney? Here? You really do like my shoes? Relax my knee? For you, anything. Does that hurt, you ask? Yes, but no worries, I feel safe. Oh, I need a sacroiliac joint injection? Tell me more!..and then I saw the ring on his left hand. 💔! Like the abrupt zipper-like sound of a needle being forcibly removed from the Adele record I had turning in my head, my fantasy was dead.

Trying to hide my disappointment, I changed the subject by asking about my possible two-fer deal of a nerve block and battery charge all packaged into a single surgical procedure. Dr. Taken told me insurance wouldn’t allow that and said I probably had at least two more years of battery-life left in my stimulator. I scheduled my injection for next month and was given a script for an x-ray to rule out a fracture in my pelvis. We fist bumped and that’s when I realized that I’d have to settle for only a bromance going forward. 

To avoid another unnecessary trip downtown, we decided to get the x-ray of my pelvis done before heading to Chinatown for lunch. The radiologist had an opening and saw me within the hour. While that worked out for the best, my mood quickly soured because I didn’t find any suitable throwing stars to purchase during our visit to Chinatown. Nor mogwai. Not even a Jack Burton sighting. However, I did keep a watchful eye out for David Lo-Pan since my wife has green eyes.

X-cited that I got some new shorts for my x-ray!