My Right Leg

Oh, yeah, I really needed this.

It’s been 9 days since I somehow managed to injure my right leg and while it has improved a little bit, I’m still limping around like Long John Silver and dealing with a lot of pain.

And the worst thing is that I don’t know what the hell happened. All I can say is that I went to my gym last Friday, did my usual workout and went home feeling just fine.

A few hours later, though, I could barely walk and it hurt like hell when I tried to sit down.

I haven’t been this seriously laid up since I broke a bone in my arm while I was taking a jiu-jitsu back in the Seventies. And even then I heard the damn bone crack.

This time around I felt nothing and I’m starting to wonder if someone is sticking pins in a voodoo doll version of me.

I’m already living with the twin miseries of looking for an apartment and working with my sister to clean out our family home, so this little bit of grief is not appreciated.

What’s worse is that I’ll be feeling better one day and then be in terrible pain the next. This injury ain’t playing fair.

My doctor thinks this condition, which has something to do with my back, has been building up for a while. He took some blood tests and told me I have to sleep on my back with pillows under my legs to take the pressure off the discs.

I was waiting for him to say “for the next few weeks…” or “for a month…” but he swung for the fences and said “from now on.”

From now on? You mean as in forever? I’ve got to sleep like a space monkey until I limp off this mortal coil? Gee, that’ll do wonders for my love life.

I hate being laid up like this. I’m an exercise junkie so missing the gym is killing me. I’ve been trying to come up with alternate forms of exercise, but outside of push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups, there’s not much you can do with a bad leg.

No Mambo Tonight

I’ve had to change my lifestyle. All the stores that I normally walk to without a second thought are suddenly far away. My sister has kindly offered to drive to me some to places that are just a few blocks from my house. It doesn’t seem natural going to these stores in a car.

I can't kneel down to say my morning prayers and I can't fold my legs to mediate. I have gone back to working out with this chi gong DVD that I got while taking a class at The Open Center. It's helped a little bit.

I feel old and useless. My right foot flops loudly to the ground whenever I walk and I’m getting this tingling feeling running up my ankle.


I was sitting in my parent’s bedroom and caught sight of my late father’s cane hanging on a shelf. How soon will I need that, I wondered?

My doctor gave me all kinds of painkillers and I’ve been taking them with gleeful abandon—anything to make this agony go away, even if it’s only for a little while.

He wrote me a prescription for an X-ray, but warned me not to do get one unless I really felt I needed it.

“If you can avoid radiation,” he said, “do it.”

Good plan.

I’m trying to find the good in all of this, but it hasn’t been easy. I recall the words of Jack, an elderly gentleman I met in the Apple store recently.

“Be thankful for everything you have,” he said, “because one day you won’t have it.”

Now I’m getting it.

I probably shouldn’t put so much emphasis on my physical condition because that’s bound to change. And to be honest, this is nothing compared to the problems so many other people in this world are facing.

I’ve walking slower now. And I’ve been trying to be patient with people who are in my way. I’m attempting to deal with the anger I feel and I’m hoping to come out of this thing a happier human being.

Okay, so can I feel better now?