Walking, What Could Go Wrong?

A couple of years ago I really got into walking.  I never run.  Walking is easier on your knees, ankles, and feet than running, and it can be just as effective at keeping you in shape as running.  But there are people who swear by running.  

“Great exercise, running.”

“I run 7 miles a day and do 5 marathons a year.”

“I meditate while running.”

To those who say running miles each day and doing a marathon about once every two months is great exercise, I say wait until age 60 when your knees and hips have been replaced with metal and plastic.  Then let’s see what you think of running.

As to meditating while running, well I see people at the recreation center reading books while walking fast on a treadmill, so I guess there are people who can do this, but I’m not one of them.  About the only thing I’d remember from reading a book while on a moving treadmill is how out of breath I was.  And the only thing I can meditate on while running is how boring it is.  But I do have mantra I repeat over and over again when jogging: “I hate this.  I hate this. I hate this,  I hate this…”  The only thing running ever did was nauseate me.  So I walk.

I’d walk 5 or 6 miles a day down the nature paths, around and around scummy, algae saturated, oxygen deprived ponds, and through various neighborhoods in the area.  Walking the nature trails is a peaceful and joyous pastime.  I take in the flora and fauna -- the blooming lilies, the reptiles sunning themselves on the walking path, the turkey vultures searching for carrion on the path’s shoulders, and the squirrels who, fearing no man, refuse to get out of your way.  All of this makes the walk a pleasant afternoon activity.  

Then there are the pitbulls.    

Maybe it’s a local thing, but for whatever reason pitbull owners around here don’t leash their dogs.  They prefer to open the front door and let Rover out to forage for lunch.  It’s easy to separate out the pitbull from the other local fauna.  If a pair a gigantic jaws comes running out from the underbrush on four stubby legs, that’s a pitbull.  There are two types of pitbulls in this world: the ones that ignore you and the ones that don’t.  Handle with care.

The ones that ignore you really ignore you.  It’s as if you don’t exist.  They just keep walking with their snout stuck to ground sniffing for who knows what while walking right past you like you were just another telephone pole.  Pitbulls are all power and strength, even their sniffing and snorting is is a violent ruckus.  They sound like they are ripping up the woods, toppling trees.  They never do things half-measure. But with this type of pitbull all you need do is be patient. Stand still and Rover will leave after he’s sniffed every blade of grass and every nook and cranny and torn up all the woods. 

The other type of pitbull is more problematic.  If he comes at you and you’re lucky he’ll just pee on you like he’s peeing on a tree to mark his territory and move on.  But the cost/benefit analysis here isn’t looking great, so you might want to consider other options, like running straight up a tree. Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Oh, come on, people can’t run up sides of trees.”  But you would be wrong.  It’s amazing what the human body can do when the brain unleashes a torrent of adrenaline in times of danger. 

It’s incidents like these that might make you want to conduct an intervention with the dog’s owner and advise him -- it's always a him -- of his errant and antisocial ways.   But if it is true that people pick dogs that come closest to matching their own personalities -- and I've seen too many similarities to question these words of wisdom -- then perhaps it is best to suppress this thought and pursue another course of action.  The far better course of action is to team up with your neighbors and take turns dumping dog shit on his lawn at 3 in the morning, every morning, until he gets the message and moves on to unleash his dog in someone else’s neighborhood.  If you live in one of those designer communities, you don’t even have to get your hands dirty.  Just use those plastic bags that hang on environmentally friendly green poles strategically placed throughout the community's common grounds to transport the dog shit to your favorite neighbor’s front yard.  


Well, anyway, pitbulls be damned, I walked and walked and walked.  I walked until one day, as I neared my house on the return trip, I felt a slight burning sensation on the inner side of my left knee where the bones meet.  But the burning soon went away, so after giving it a day’s rest I went walking again.  Same thing.  I return home and the inner side of my left knee is burning again.  But again it goes away after a day's rest.  And since I’m the kind of person who is intentionally oblivious of that which he does not want to face, rather than deal the problem by seeing a doctor and asking what's up, I assume a new routine: walk, knee burns, give it a day or two rest, walk again.  Until LO AND BEHOLD it doesn’t stop burning . . . not ever. 

Instead it gets worse.  It gets a lot worse.  Now I can’t walk at all.  Now I’m holed up in my house watching shopping network reruns while the summer passes me by.  Now I’m gaining weight because the only thing I can do to break the monotony is to eat, and as I eat more and more, I gain more and more weight, which puts more and more weight on my knee when I walk.  So it gets worse.  Now I look like Quasimodo slithering up and down the isles at the supermarket, left leg pulling up the rear.  It hurts so much I go downstairs from bedroom to kitchen by sitting on my ass and lowering myself step by step.  And the pain won’t go away. No matter how much I stay off my leg, it won’t go away.  

But me go to a doctor, now?  Nooooo!  Not me. 

There is always a knee brace. 

Which does nothing at all except put pressure on all the wrong spots on my knee and make me feel more uncomfortable than I already am.  

Next?  The cane.

A cane will do the trick.  The cane will support my weight when I walk relieving the pressure, and with time the pain will slowly go away.  I’m proud of myself.  Good thought.  Good solution. So I drive to Target, walk the isles doing my best impression of Quasimodo, pick out the sturdiest cane, and purchase it.  The simplest things can teach you great lessons in life, like how canes support your outer leg by forcing all your weight on the inner side of your leg and knee, which makes the pain even worse.  But you can’t place the cane on the inside side of your leg where it needs to be because doing so will crush your testicles at the first misstep.  And I’m not tough enough to willingly swap this pain for that pain. I'm not a pitbull.     

Next up?  Crutches


Crutches are the ticket.  But I can’t find anyone who sells crutches near me, and besides, they seem too much like work.  I’d probably lose one anyway, and then I’d be using the remaining crutch like a cane, and the problem with a cane is… 

So, defeated, I give in and go to the doctor.

My doctor, who I rarely visit, takes one look at me and says

“You’ve got Bursitis.”

What’s my first thought?  My first thought is a question: Is that anything like gout?  Goiter? Consumption?  I’m wondering this because Bursitis sounds suspiciously like one of those diseases characters in Victorian era novels contracts and then slowly withers away and dies.  

But no.  My doctor reassures me.  Nothing to worry about.  I’m just getting old, he says.  Oh!  Hurray!  I’m getting old.  Seeing the look on my face he quickly pivots and says it’s also an inflammation athletes often come down with.  He says this to make me feel better.  Instead of getting older I’m now an athlete who is training too hard.  He’s lying.  I know it; he knows I know it.  But it works. I feel better.

Then he goes on without asking.  

“You see, we all have these little fat nodules called bursa sacs where bones, tendons, and ligaments meet.  They act like shock absorbers keeping bone, tendon, and ligament from rubbing against one another and causing pain.  But with excess use, these bursas can get inflamed, and then it’s them that causes the pain, and that’s called Bursitis.  I’ll write you a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and you’ll be good as new in a week."

Two weeks later, no change.  All these prescriptions and nothing.  It’s now been 6 weeks with no end in sight.  So I do what you are told never to do, but I should have done at the beginning: I search the internet for an answer.

Immediately I find all kinds of forums discussing Bursitis.  They have clubs. Only qualification?  You have to have had Bursitis. And there is this one thing everyone who has had Bursitis agrees on: “Take Ibuprofen.”  You know, the over the counter cheap anti-inflammatory that everyone uses, including your dentist, who gives it to you when what you really need is percodan because he’s been drilling to China straight through tooth, bone, nerve, and rock.  So I buy a giant bottle of Ibuprofen for like 10 cents and start taking 600 mg three times a day.  

I’m walking in a week.  In two weeks I’m back to my routine of walking about 6 miles a day, except now I swallow 400 mg of Ibuprofen before and after, and my knee is humming along.   


So there you go.  Ibuprofen, the Bursitis miracle drug.  Just don’t tell anyone.  If the FDA ever finds out how effective Ibuprofen is, it will make you get a prescription for it.


Comments

  1. i'm older. my history is like the above description: running to walking to biking now, because of joint problems... i used to carry one of those small horn things that only dogs can hear; it saved my ass several times from vicious 4 leggers...

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a good idea. Where do you get one?

    I've never actually had a problem with any of the pitbulls I came across while walking or biking. But there was one pit-mix about 100 lbs with rippling muscles. A woman had him on a leash, and she spent the entire time holding him back as he bristled at every passerby. I said to myself, lady that dog isn't minding you, and anytime he wants he can pull that lead away from you or worse turn on you. It's a very bad idea to have a big dog who doesn't recognize you as the pack leader.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i gave mine to my daughter... but i'm pretty sure you could find one at amazon: they're called dog dazer II the one i had worked well, as i said...

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