“Okay John, are you ready for some pain?”
Though I didn’t really need the warning, I appreciated it. Mark was about to inject a little different formula of cortisone into my aching heel, but I clearly remembered the last injection the previous February. “Go for it, Doc,” I said.
It was more than a little pain and as I watched him pushing the needle in over the next thirty seconds, wondered why it wasn’t coming out the other side. He finally extracted it and offered up my working instructions. He knows me.
“Okay…take it easy, ice and stretch the shit out of it and expect it to get worse before it gets better,” he said.
‘Ice and stretch the shit out of it’ is some medical jargon they use for knuckleheads who don’t do what they’re told to do, he told me. “That means no running or excessive hiking…do you understand, John?”
“It’s not like I’m a four-year old, Doc. How about riding my bike and will I be ready for a 15-mile hike on Friday?” I asked.
“Yes to the bike and the hike…but take it easy for the next three days,” he concluded.
I left his office before eight, being so thankful to have a guy who cared enough to get me in on short notice and on a Saturday morning before the office opened. He would be speaking later that day at Kyrie Irving’s basketball camp and had 20 some patients to see before noon. His running shoe stores are doing well and expanding. He has a passion for the work he does and no one is better at keeping competitive athletes in their sports instead of on the sidelines.
I’d already taken out Jason’s dogs and fed their cat. I’d had to walk Copper and Dakota, too since Savannah was out of town as well. I was missing my normal Kleifeld’s breakfast, but I really needed that cortisone shot. I drove to Mimi’s and did chores there until 1 p.m., which included taking the heaviest front door I’ve ever handled off its hinges so I could plane off some wood and get it to close more easily. I also spent time on a ladder scraping the house and preparing it for painting.
After a couple of sandwiches, I drove to the Handy Rents and picked up a 65-pound jack hammer. My work partner, Justin, has a torn up shoulder from a car accident many years ago, so I took on the operation and removal of the concrete pad covering the leaking water hydrant we had to replace. It was the hot side; they’d done the cold the previous summer before I’d arrived.
“So you rented a jack hammer back then, spent two days taking out the cold and replacing it, then filled it back in and recovered it in cement. Am I getting it right?” I asked.
“That sums it up,” Justin said.
“Why didn’t you replace the hot side since it was the same age as the cold and more importantly, why did you cement it back in? Gravel is our friend, Justin, and that’s all were putting back. We tamp it down and put the horse mats over it and only you and I will ever know there’s no concrete down there,” I said.
“That sounds good to me,” he admitted.
I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I can figure some things out and doing extra work just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t make sense to me. The plumber concurred. We filled it with gravel and covered it up.
I got back home after stopping back at Jason’s to deal with his animals by six and began cutting grass. I hadn’t edged the driveway and sidewalks all summer and in keeping with my ‘curb appeal’ approach to getting the house ready for sale, elected to do that. An hour later, I was dripping sweat and explaining to my neighbors why.
“I think you’ll actually need a shower before you jump in the pool this time John. I don’t think the filtration system or chemicals can take the amount of sweat and dirt I’m noticing on your body,” Pat said.
I’d tried to clean the tar that had been liberally applied to the drainage pipes we’d been working around when replacing the hydrant with gasoline, but failed miserably. My clothes were covered, as well.
“You might be right. I’ll try showering.”
It was now eight o’clock and I began thinking I’d been on my feet since six a.m. and had not ‘iced and stretched the shit’ out of anything yet. I’m pretty sure I’d done exactly what a four-year old would have and made things even worse. Well…I made a huge smoothie, grabbed my ice wrap and headed for the sofa, plugging in ‘Return to Planet of the Apes’ per Jason’s suggestion before I did. I was whipped.
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