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Of all the crap that happen last year for me -- clinical depression, bad reactions to meds, my father's anxiety, the passing of my aunt, a knee injury, a grueling residency, the passing of my grandfather, a separation, a second - more serious - knee injury and losing my residency -- the ACL tear is the only one where I feel like I got things figured out...at least enough to pass on some advice. A little background on how I tore my ACL... I love soccer. I mean LOVE soccer. My parents wouldn't let me play as a child. Two reasons for this have been offered by my mother: 1) I was too aggressive as a child. Therefore, she was afraid I would hurt myself or other kids. 2) My mother didn't want to be "one of those moms," which I think is a soccer mom. Dollars to donuts the second reason is more true. Anyways, in 2007 I sustained a bruised meniscus -- two pieces of cartilage in your knee that cushions you bones as you move and also help keep your knee stable -- and after that I didn't recover very well. So here comes my first piece of advice: ASK FOR PHYSICAL THERAPY AFTER ANY KNEE INJURY. Believe me; you can do nothing better to protect your knees than physical therapy. Most people -- particularly women -- sustain ACL tears because of weak hamstrings and quadracepts. And now for my second piece of advice: STRENGTH TRAINING IS IMPORTANT TO PREVENTING KNEE INJURIES. Obviously, I didn't follow this advice very well. And then I played with a team that was slightly above my skill level. While playing on a cool, fall evening, I went in for a late tackle on the ball; totally missed; and then I felt the tell-tale "pop"...well, for me it was more of a "crack" or a "click." But no matter what the onomonopia...you know something has gone seriously wrong. Here's how it feels: first, your knee joint feels like it's pulling apart, then it feels like the bottom half (your tibia, fibula and foot) and the top half (your femur and hip joint) are sliding away from each other and then "Crick" and you're on the ground. Neta's advice on what NOT TO DO after this happens: 1) Try to get back into the game. I definitely laid in a heap on the field for a minute or two; and I was carried off. But then I tried to go back. Do not do it. It won't work. 2) Walk around -- it's not going to happen. Ice, elevation and rest 3) Have sex...trust me this gets really tricky with a torn ACL 4) Go back to work. Seriously, don't do it. I went back to work two days after tearing my ACL. That was dumb, really dumb. (And since my boss was a total insensitive jerk about this, it was even that much more dumb.) 5) If it's your right leg, drive a car. Neta's advice on what TO DO after this happens: 1) ICE 2) REST 3) ELEVATION 4) Call your doctor and schedule an appointment. Tell them it's an emergency. I saw an orthopedic surgeon (I just happened to have one on hand for my previous knee injury.) I recommend Dr. Andrew Cosgarea -- he's a little light on personality but he does all of the right things. 5) Take at least one week off of work -- two if you can swing it. Seriously, you will be a much happier, healthier, more able-bodied person for it. And your workplace will function better without an injured you there. 6) Buy one of those one-shoulder backpacks and get rid of your purse. You can't carry anything in your hands with crutches so you have to wear a backpack. 7) Buy crutches and a cane. 8) USE the crutches and then the cane. 9) Get a prescription for physical therapy from your doctor. Again, this is the best thing you can to do for your knee, even after the injury. 10) Rent a bunch of movies 11) ICE 12) REST 13) ELEVATION As I found out, you do heal but tearing your ACL is like breaking a bone. You have some serious structural derrangement going on in your knee so you are not very stable. And it hurts like hell. I did the 800mg of ibuprofen 3x per day and 1000mg of Tylenol (acetomeniphen) 2x per day for like 5 days. Some people may require stronger pain killers -- so ask your doctor. (In another entry, we can talk about how narcotics and I do not mix.) I hope this helps somebody. Some of the TO DO things I did; #6 and #8 I didn't and wish I did. Tags: acl tear, november 2008
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  contemplative
Current Music: rain drops
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So I wanted to have a public record of the names Jan and I agree on....so here they are...drum role please..... Girls: Margaret, Tessa, Penelope, Alice, Lucy, Rose, Eleanor Boys: Hamish, Dominic, Sebastian, Liam, Rhys, Malcolm, Callum, Alexander Not that we are going to be having children any time soon but I felt this needed to be published and recorded for future reference. :-) I'm still going to keep pressing for Caelian and Linus...but they may just end up being cat names.... Tags: names
Current Location: Baltimore, MD
Current Mood:  silly
Current Music: 106.5 FM
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Some of you may have read my previous entry on, what I call, the "verbing of America." The thrust being that language mutates and, often, in ways I don't like. To add to that discussion, I am pasting below a piece from The Word Detective on the evolution of "lackadaisical." (For those of you interested, The Word Detective is a great website on the origins and use of words -- http://www.word-detective.com/.)
The Word Detective
By Evan Morris
Copyright © 2008 by Evan Morris
For Release: Monday, February 18, 2008
Dear Word Detective: Where does the word "lackadaisical" come from? -- Joe.
Ah, a short question, but one that opens a window into a world of weirdness.
That's what I love about the English language -- every word
bears the fingerprints of our ancestors, many of whom were seriously
strange. The poet John Ciardi used to say that our words are miniature
fossilized poems written by the human race, which is true, but sometimes
they seem more like miniature fossilized psychiatric case reports.
Today we use "lackadaisical" to mean "lacking interest, energy or
initiative; lacking spirit." A person with a "lackadaisical" attitude
is apathetic and uninterested in much of anything, and a lackadaisical
employee usually produces shoddy and substandard work. In fact, a
lackadaisical approach to anything rarely results in the desired
outcome, as US Senator Fred Thompson recently proved in his famously
torpid and now-defunct run for the Republican nomination. According to
the New York Daily News, "Thompson's candidacy was widely ridiculed by
party professionals for its lackadaisical quality. 'How are you supposed
to tell?' one of them remarked yesterday after Thompson's exit."
Given the laid-back attitude of the truly "lackadaisical," it's a bit
surprising that the word itself arose as a exclamation of agitated
anguish, which would seem to require at least a smidgen of adrenaline to
produce. Back in the 16th century, if you were faced with an alarming
reversal or personal disaster, you were more than likely to express your
distress with a cry of "Alack the day!" or "Alack a day!" (meaning
"curse this day" or "woe this day"). Shakespeare used the phrase in
Romeo & Juliet to announce Juliet's demise ("Shee's dead, deceast,
shee's dead: alacke the day!"). This "alack" is the same found in the
phrase "alas and alack," and comes from an old use of "lack" to mean
"failure or shame."
By the 17th century, the expression had been clipped to "lack-a-day,"
and by the 18th, it had mutated, oddly, to "lackadaisy." During this
evolution, however, its connotation shifted from a serious expression of
grief to a fatalistic lament, more apathetic and self-pitying than
agonized, and roughly synonymous with "what the heck" or "that's the way
it goes." Naturally, persons given to expressing what was considered
such "vapid sentimentality" at every opportunity (and doing little else)
were called "lackadaisical."
Tags: words
Current Mood: contemplative
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I hate it; I know you hate it. The journalists and the political pundits, the wonks and the speechwriters, though, love it -- the verbing of America. ("Makes 'em think thems cleverer than we is.") The latest victim in this epidemic? "swift-boated" Can I use it in a sentence? Glad you asked! "It’s also true that Mr. Obama has received more gentle press scrutiny than Mrs. Clinton, and if he were the nominee, he would be buffeted, investigated and swift-boated in a way that he hasn’t been (but that Mrs. Clinton has)." (Quoted from a NY Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristoff -- 2/7/08.) Four hundred years from now some poor fifth-grader is going to have to ask a word etymologist to give her the etymology of "suevod." "Oh," he'll say, "it used to spelled 'swift-boated' and it goes back to the failed presidential campaign of John Kerry. Interestingly, if John Kerry hadn't been suevoded, he might have just won the Presidency and the United States might have survived the 25 years war with China. Then I'd be writing this in english and not in chinese. Thanks for your question." :-) Tags: swift-boated
Current Mood:  aggravated
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I've been a political hack for nearly 15 years. (Yes, even as a high schooler, I was volunteering on campaigns. I was paid staff on my first campaign at age 18.) And all I can say is that most politicians don't respect the intelligence of the average American. But Barack Obama does. He's not afraid to be honest and say what he thinks. He's also not cowed by overzealous attacks. He, in fact, does "stay the course." If you are an intelligent person -- Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or Green Party -- you might want to take a look at Mr. Obama. To get you started, I pasted an except from and a link to a good article on Mr. Obama below: "Mr. Obama’s much-derided readiness to talk promptly and directly to the leaders of Iran and Syria, for instance, was a clear alternative, agree with it or not, to Mrs. Clinton’s same-old Foggy Bottom platitudes on the subject. His supposedly reckless pledge to chase down Osama bin Laden and his gang in Pakistan, without Pakistani permission if necessary, was a pointed rebuke of both Mrs. Clinton’s and President Bush’s misplaced fealty to our terrorist-enabling “ally,” Pervez Musharraf. Like Mr. Obama’s prescient Iraq speech of 2002, his open acknowledgment of the Pakistan president’s slipperiness turned out to be ahead of the curve." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02rich.html?th&emc=thTags: barak obama, presidential 2008
Current Mood: engaged
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Gallery: Rovers 0 Aston Villa 4 The scoreline didn't quite tell the full tale as ten-man Rovers go down at Ewood...
http://www.rovers.premiumtv.co.uk/page/MatchGallery/0,,10303~1178764,00.html
Okay, nil-4 is an amazingly bad score in football. But I feel a need to defend my newly-chosen side. First of all, as manager Mark Hughes said, the Rovers will bounce after this "freak" result. Indeed, I may be an acolyte, therefore, given to fits of staunch, if misguided, support for my new team. However, sometimes good teams lose in bad ways. Look at the Man U v. Bolton Wanders result -- nil-1. So strange things happen in football.
Second, I didn't pick the Rovers because they are an amazingly good team. If I wanted unrelenting goodness, I would have chosen Arsenal or Man U or even Liverpool. I wanted a team that reflects my attitude of having something to prove in football; I think the Rovers do that.
Finally, I haven't seen the match just read the reports. Ryan Nelsen, the formed DCU defender, was sent off in the 52nd minute for a shirt pull. Apparently, this just ruined it for the Rovers. And many seem to agree that the Rovers looked good up until the send-off and that the send-off was unquestioningly questionable.
So my Rovers have not failed me....just the match referee. :-) Tags: aston villa, blackburn rovers, football, soccer
Current Location: home
Current Mood: determined
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