The Domino factor and my aging frame
Sports medicine is an iffy solution to age old conundrum
By Terrance Gavan
You may have heard the story about the big league pitcher who developed a blister on his baby toe playing tennis on one of his off days.
Two starts later his pitching arm was ruined, his promising career was in shambles and his niggling baby toe boo-boo was fingered as the cause.
Now that sounds a bit farfetched you might say. How can a blister down there cause so much chaos so far up the totem? Is this the start of a bad sports joke?
Well no. There’s a very real and logical explanation. The pitcher changed his windup to take pressure off his little toe. He didn’t want to land hard on the blister so he tweaked his knee at the end of his delivery to prevent a hard bump on the offending digit. That caused his hip to joggle, which caused his arm to tweak and that caused his tendon to pleat.
Well you get the picture. It was summed up in that old Spiritual, Dem Dry Bones.
Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone, your ankle bone connected to your leg bone, your leg bone connected to your knee bone,
Your knee bone connected to your thigh bone, your thigh bone connected to your hip bone.
And of course the hip bone is connected to the pocketbook and the wallet’s connected to the contract and well, in our poor pitcher’s case his contract connected to the boo-boo. His real boo-boo was pitching with a boo-boo.
My Sports Medicine guy, Dr. Wabash Cannonball, calls it the Domino Effect. He even wrote a widely regarded paper on the subject entitled: The Domino Effect and the Aging Athlete. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It won him a Chair on the Sports Medicine Board at Johns Hopkins.
I was the case study.
A while back I developed a bruise on my right instep while skateboarding. Well let’s back this up. I was actually headed out to the vert ramp when I stepped on a huge pebble.
Angry at not being able to crank some ollies and a few Kamikaze Noggin Knockers I immediately went home to pick up my tennis racket. Halfway through the first set my playing partner John asked why I was walking funny. I told him my Tony Hawke tale of woe.
Into the second set I noticed that I was hitting off my left foot, to protect my instep.
I was now developing a serious throb in the ankle of my left foot.
At about the same time my serve, which usually flows gently, like a butterfly fluttering in a spring zephyr, was slowly devolving into a chaotic spasm. I looked like I was connected to a manic puppeteer in the final throes of a Tennessee Holler religious rite.
I was hitting my serve in an exaggerated tiptoe stance to ease pressure on my ankles and I was twisting my upper body to compensate. Little twinges started shooting up my left side.
On changeover, at 5-4, I noticed that my left arm was hanging lower that my right arm. My neck was convulsed in a spasm that left me looking over my right shoulder. I was limping on my sore left ankle and standing tiptoed on my bruised right instep.
John, who was and still is ten years my junior, then mentioned that we haven’t been rock climbing in a while.
“Great idea John! That might work out a few kinks,” I said.
We arrived at the rock face and as I grabbed the belay ropes I felt a sudden twinge in my lower back.
“Nothing like a little free climb to loosen up the muscles,” I shouted.
About half way up, my left hand, which was lodged in a small crevice, suddenly went numb. At the same time the twinge in my back locked into an uncontrollable spasm.
As I fell from the rockface my crinkled neck gave me a perfect line on John, who, thankfully, was on belay. As the belay rope tightened and caught my weight, I felt my left knee lock up.
As John helped me take off the belay ropes I suggested that we should go for a jog to work out the cricks.
John ignored me and asked for directions to Dr Wabash Cannonball’s Sports Medicine Clinic.
“You, do not, look so hot and I think I heard something go sploooot when the belay ropes caught you.”
“Well, okay, but I’m sure it’s nothing that a few pushups and a good night’s sleep won’t cure,” I said.
I declined John’s kind offer to run in and get me a wheelchair, and I sidled into the clinic.
Wabash was looking out of his corner office window when I arrived.
I was tiptoeing on my right foot, and dragging my left leg with the sprained ankle and locked knee, my left shoulder was now fully 8 inches below the right, and my neck spasm was allowing me to maintain a conversation and eye contact with John who was behind me as I sauntered into the clinic.
I reached for the door and heard a pop from the vicinity of my right shoulder.
Dr Wabash met me in the lobby, watching as I slowly dragged my form into view.
“Hey, Quasimodo, the Cathedral called. I think it’s your turn on the Bells.”
Did I mention, that Dr Cannonball is a nice guy, but no bedside manner.
As I explained the day’s events, he shook his head.
“How old are you? Idiot!”
And then: “Are you sure you weren’t dropped on a hard cement floor when you were young?”
And then he started to hum “Dem Bones”.
“Hah, I got it… your head bone’s connected to your gluteus maximus. Take two aspirins and call me when you can pick up a phone.”
He did send me a copy of his article before leaving for Johns Hopkins.
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