In Which I Get Diagnosed

I have a diagnosis on my foot and I’m none too pleased with it.  Oh, I can’t fault the dianosis, but the "cure" is wait it out and (eventually) it will stop hurting.

First, I need to backup and catchup.  It hurt, I went to the doctor and got a referral to the orthopedist and a prescription for Naprosin.  I took the Naprosin for two weeks and it didn’t change the level of pain, so I went to the orthopedist.  He looked, he asked, he XRayed, he moved my foot around like the joystick on a go-cart game and then he ordered up an MRI.

The MRI was on Saturday and it was cold.  As I lay there listening to the machine knock and click and sound like it was trying to rock itself loose and waddle out into the parking lot, I was again amazed by technology that could slice and dice my foot into images that can be viewed as though one were wielding a scapel.  I also couldn’t stop thinking about the worldwide helium shortage that will soon raise the cost of birthday baloons and coolant for machines like this MRI.  That’s really what I was thinking, honest.

I left with a CD of my MRI, but I would have to wait until today (Tuesday) for the report to be sent to the orthopedist (should orthopedist have an ‘a’ in it?).  Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was fire up the CD and start looking at the insides of my foot.

Here’s what I thought was the problem.  I saw several black areas, on the MRI, that corresponded to the painful areas in my foot.  I figured that dark was liquid and that I had a lot of inflammation going on in there.  But, that wasn’t the professional’s opinion.

I have a bone bruise in the lateral cunieform bone.  And I have pictures!

This first picture is the dark scan, but I’ve messed with the contrast so it doesn’t look like a dark on dark blob.  Bone marrow is black.  Except for the bone in the yellow circle, which is totally bruised.

Here is the same scan with bone marrow in white, just for comparison’s sake.  If this screen grab was better, you could see that the same bone is darker then its neighbors.  That’s the bruising.

Oh yeah, MRIs are mirror images, so this is my left foot reversed, not my right foot.

I still don’t know exactly how I bruised my lateral cunieform, but I have a pretty good idea that I didn’t share with any of the doctors.

Baseball is a very superstitious sport.  If you do A and B happens, and B is good, then you have to keep doing A in order for B to keep happening.  Rationally, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way superstitions work.  Well, Mrs. Ender and I have a baseball superstition.  If we have sex before a National’s game, the Nat’s win.  We are required, by superstition law, to  continue having sex before games if we want our team to win.  Proof?  We had sex before Sunday’s game (Nats won 4-0) and we joked before last night’s game that we’ve doomed the team because we didn’t have sex.  The Nats lost 4-3.  It’s the sex and it’s that easy to understand.

So, back to my theory on hurting my foot.  It was pre-game about three weeks ago and we were doing our part to secure a win.  This particular afternoon I was on my feet–we both were–and I am sure that at least one point I went up on my toes to gain more traction.  That is probably when I bruised my foot bone and guaranteed the win. The Nats beat the Orioles 3-1.  My foot hurt the next day so no sex, and the Nats lost 2-1.  Don’t tell me that sex doesn’t win ballgames.

I have to get my Springsteen tickets listed on StubHub.  I bought four tickets to the Bosses’ upcoming concert in Washington when they were offered to Nats season ticket holders.  With all the fees (damn, there are a lot of fees), the $68 tickets cost me about $95 each.  The current asking price on StubHub for the same section in which my tickets are located is $250.  I think I’ll ask for $225 to make sure they sell and make a few pennies.

Speaking of pennies, I’ve been getting a lot of old coins in my change recently.  I don’t mean end of last century old, I mean middle of last century old.  I’ve been getting nickels and pennies from the ’40s and ’50s.  No old dimes or quarters, just pennies and nickels.  I wonder if someone has broken an old piggy bank and is using in our cafeteria?  Either that, or I’m in the Twilight Zone.  Da, da, DAAAAAAAAA!

Other than that, I’ve got nothing.

Ender is out.