shorty

Before I tell you this I want you to understand my personal level for pain tolerance.

I gave birth to Evan in the room next to (our bedrooms shared a common wall in house built of heavy duty cardboard)  4 year old Matthew's bedroom at 1:20 in the morning, with the bedroom doors open, without waking Matt.

I was in so much pain from this insane hip pain that every time I had to move from a seated position to standing I cried out in insane primal animal noises and said motherfucker a lot. Then I'd drag my leg along as if I just been shot in the thigh and it didn't respond to my command anymore.

Long story short: Trochanteric Bursitis 

Pretty much it's a fat middle aged woman's condition in which the bursa of your (over) weight bearing hip becomes inflamed and "tender" in a world where "tender" means "CAUSES YOU SO MUCH PAIN THAT YOU TO LOSE THE WILL TO LIVE"

Seriously, I was walking around like my leg was dead weight and this caused everything else to hurt, especially my (also weight bearing thanks to my all natural god given Dolly Parton boobs) neck.

So, to wrap things up, the lake chiro recommended some sports guy chiro down here near new town and now I have a new chiro whom I shall call shorty. Someone warned me that shorty had a god complex. I asked her what man didn't? And I tried him out anyway but mostly because he gave his cell phone number to the lake chiro for me and told me to come in the same day and I was desperate. His office looks really familiar and I think that I might have gone there once when I first made it to new town, but this time he helped me out (or possibly the prescription strength doses of aleve I have been taking too...) so he can have his god complex as long as he takes me to a place where I am pain free enough to drive back to stepford to see the old chiro because I am 100% sure this all started because my foot is doing something weird and nobody else wants to look at my feet.  

Anyway, obviously we were at the lake last weekend (where I saw the lake chiro) and I had hobbled  down to lie on the lounge chairs on the dock with my friend who came by for a visit. She brought her dog, a small fuzzy mixed, which is what sweet pea thinks she is, so all was great until I took 5 minutes to lower myself onto the lounge chair and as soon as I got into a position where I could relax I heard an unusual "plunk" which turned out to be sweet pea falling off the dock into the water. Sweet pea does not swim- ever, she sometimes walks elbow deep into the water but that's it, so she didn't know how to get out. The look on her face was sheer terror and I managed to roll off the lounge chair with only one profane outburst onto my feet and drop my pants and dive into the September cooled lake (have I ever mentioned what a wussy I am when it comes to cold water swimming?) and then sweet pea followed me to the stairs and was able to frantically scramble out of the lake.

I really do like having a dog who isn't wet and stinky every day, even though one of my most special times with bear bait was swimming with her every day the last summer when she had the orthopedic problems and couldn't really walk but could swim as far she wanted to. She reeked by the time labor came around though. All the dogs who swim smell the same kind of awful by the end of summer.  Don't think it is very good for their skin or something. 

I kind of feel bad for being such a wuss when it comes to a cold lake, but I've been like this since I was a kid. The lake at the camp we were forced to go to was cold enough that my recollection of it was that it burned it was so cold. 

Did I ever tell you about the time I fell into a frozen lake? I was on the crew team in college and there were 25 girls for 24 seats, which pretty much always worked out perfectly because pretty much one person didn't show up for practice every day until one of the first spring time practices.  We would run to the boat house as a warm up, and then we would row. This particular morning there was still ice on the inlet where our boat house was located so when we got there the coach was already out in his boat chopping up the ice so we could make it to the open water of the lake. The coach put me into the boat to row and one girl into his motor boat. Since I was nice and warm from my run and would be working hard as I rowed I left my outer layers in the boat house. Half way through practice he told the girl in his boat and me to switch places. We successfully switched places on the middle of the lake but then I had to sit in his motor boat.... with not enough layers on, in my sweaty clothes for 1/2 hour or so. I recall hugging my knees. When we got back to the dock, he jumped out and I stood on my frozen and numb legs and got one leg onto the dock when the boat began to drift away from the dock. I was too frozen stiff to do anything about it and ended up in the lake. I fell in, came up and he screamed SWIM! I swam to the edge of the dock and he reached over, grabbed my shirt and just hauled me onto the dock. Then he yelled RUN! and I ran into the boat house while screaming in pain and ripping my clothes off. It felt as if needles had been shoved into every single pore of my body.

Pal will still occasionally tell the story about hearing me screaming in pain when I got home and went to take a warm shower. 

These days I prefer a hot tub environment.

But I'm thinking that with this new hip development that swimming is probably going to be my new best sport and that I really need to move it or lose it and should start swimming at the Y. Also, if I needed an excuse to get my act together and drop some poundage the thought of the pain coming back should be enough motivation for me.