My not so hip pelvis

First, credit to Douglas Adams for that title's pun. To Adams I'd say, "Rest in peace," but that has too religious an overtone for such a devout atheist, the person who wrote, I paraphrase: it's not that I don't believe in god, but rather that the evidence convinces me there isn't one. Timely and related, I just yesterday finished the fourth, and likely final, given the DEATH of Terry Pratchett ten years ago, Science of Discworld book, which closed with the line from Penn Jillette, "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby." Sorry Margaret Atwood.  Yup, true to form, I just meandered through a huge range of tangential thoughts, but hey, just be thankful I didn't title this post, "My Ill Ilium"!

My hip, it hasn't been doing so well. A month ago, during physical therapy, Jordan showed me a variation on child's pose with a sweep of the torso left and right. When I swept left, I felt a little tightness in my right hip, an awareness, not a problem. I kept doing what I do, riding my bike and running my feet (hopefully not my mounth too much), and the awareness progressed to more insistence. After two and a half weeks progress, I made an appointment, a week later, with my quite awesome primary care doctor to have it evaluated. By the time I saw Dr Lash, it was worse, with pins and needles numbness if I stretched the hamstring of that right leg, and blame was placed on the sciatic nerve, physical therapy proscribed, and instructions to contact for imaging if it didn't improve after five sessions.

Our medical community is more than slightly overtaxed, so the usual wait for PT is a month, but since I already had appointments scheduled, I was able to transfer them to the new issue, and conveniently, the nerve in my left arm has improved to where I can pretty effectively signal left, and the muscle has regenerated to where it no longer looks like it should be attached to an Auschwitz victim. Still, our medical system is also burdened by rules, which do often make sense, so my leg was evaluated a week and a half after the visit with Dr Lash and will receive its first true treatment tomorrow, which is good, because even by the standards of someone with a somewhat deficient sense of pain, it hurts!

It could be worse, much in the way I was thankful that I live in a time and place that offers the ACDF surgery that has helped me regain use of my left arm after my self inflicted error on the bike last October. My doctor assured me it will get better as she was walking me out after our visit, and cunning as she is, I quickly realized that unique farewell was a chance to observe my gait without immediate awareness I was being observed. Yes, Dr Lash is that good.

Note the misspelling of my last name.

I finally did this morning.

So, I'm in the system, innitially evaluated, and help is on the way. I also had a little smile when I noticed the error on the envelope with my intake paperwork and wondered if the person who wrote it was familiar with hearing my name. That idea still holds value to me, that my racing had a memorable impact, hopefully positive, on people's lives. The third "a" at the end was a common mistake from people subject to my family's mispronounciation of our name. Decades ago, when I first met Richard Fries, then grand poobah of New England's The Ride racing journal, I pointed out their consistent editorial error, so he included a correction blurb in their next issue that mentioned that, a year earlier, a Canadian pro who couldn't quite remember this new kid's name, had said the previous week's race winner was, "Skipper Malowitz, or something." 

Mention of that mistake stuck, and soon friends were cheering for me as Skipper, so I wrote a letter to The Ride thanking them for the correction, but also noting that between Skipper, and the moniker of "The Professor" assigned to me by announcer Rob Powers, there was a correlation between my nicknames and the characters of Gilligan's Island, so my letter closed with, "Please, just call me Marianne." That one didn't stick.

Start with a tangent. End with a tangent. Happily, back on topic, a very gentle weekend with maybe twenty miles ridden yesterday in two installments has my hip feeling a lot less bad. Biking right can make everything better!