(no subject)

[tylik]

Yesterday I had an appointment with a DO who is the director of medical education at one of the local hospitals. Pain in the ass to find the place (Google maps led me astray!) but I finally saw him. I'd figured that he might be helpful with the spine problems, and that either way I could pick his brain a bit about osteopathic education. It turned out that he's probably one of the most skilled people at manual manipulation I've ever met (and I've met a lot). And one of the authors of "The Foundations of Osteopathic Medicine", which I've been reading. (I mentioned I was reading it, he said "We're working on the third edition" - and finally the name clicked. I'd figured I'd just seen his name around UH.)

But before much of that came out, he was asking me about my studies, and I explained what I was doing now and a little about my background, after which he asked "Have you considered medicine?" I didn't even giggle, and confessed that I had indeed considered such. "Why aren't you an osteopathic physician?" Anyhow, yes, I got to pick his brain, and didn't leave until after seven.

Today I woke up feeling great. Probably the best I've felt since probably late December. I mean, I could feel muscles that had finally relaxed in my scalp. Seriously. Though during sparring I managed to whack the foot I'd injured Saturday before last, which has still been sore. I had an appointment with the head of the pain management center, who was the only physiatrist that I could find at UH. A bit of hesitation there - almost everyone working for him are anesthesiologists, and I am not letting anyone inject steroids into my spine again.

Anyhow, so I went in, and liked him pretty well. Not sure if he's going to have the right resources for me, but I think the chances are reasonable. When he did the physical exam everything was going quite nicely, and then he grabbed my foot, and I yelped. "Uh, yeah, I was going to ask you about that..." say I. I mean, when it's been eleven days and the bruising is mostly healed (it was impressive bruising) but the whole area over the first metatarsal is sore, swollen and kind of spongey... "You cracked it," says he. "Oh, I've cracked a metatarsal before, it hurts a lot more than this. This is pretty superficial." "Does it hurt here?" he asked. I yelped. (In fairness, he didn't press particularly hard. But K had blocked my kick at that precise spot this morning, and it was kind of unhappy with me.) "Yep, you cracked it. First thing, you need to get an X-ray. And no martial arts until this is healed!" After some discussion we agreed that he didn't mean forms. Um... I think I might decide that he just means not kicking anything with that foot.

Anyhow, I guess I won't really know until I get the X-ray back... but well, now that I think of it, and how weird and spongey the sore area has been, even after the bruises healed, and how much it hurts if anything touches it from the top of the foot (like my shoe, say) it does kind of make sense. If it is indeed broken I feel kind of dumb for running around on it for the past week and a half. Though come to think of it, when I last cracked a metatarsal, when it really did hurt a lot more (pressure from the bottom, rather than the top, and that's hard to avoid if you walk everywhere) I ran on that one for a week before I got around to seeing anyone about it. (That was a particularly bad week, though, for other reasons.)

Anyhow, I'm actually really happy with both my forms work and sparring recently.