Tastes Like Physical Therapy

When you have a sprained wrist, a reasonable four-step approach to expediting recovery is to Rest it, Ice it, Compress it, and Elevate it. There's even an acronym for it. But I forget what that acronym is. Not that it matters; I know what you should do to allow a sprain to heal and concordantly, I know what you should not do if you want your sprain to heal. I know it so well that I decided to write it down and put it in a list. I've decided to call the list What I Did Yesterday.

The assault began at 5:30 with rugby practice. In the months of January and February, rugby practice consists mostly of sprinting and plyometrics and in order to show solidarity with my team, I have decided to do these workouts with them. For Monday's routine, that meant doing two minutes of T-pushups which require that you support yourself on one hand. Which, I might mention, is painfully bent 90 degrees at the wrist.

After practice was over, I thought I'd say hello to some of my friends on the ultimate frisbee squad who were running around in the other end of the fieldhouse. One of the taller, more sinister looking of them informed me that he would appreciate twenty minutes of my time later that evening. As it would turn out, the twenty-minute task at hand was extracting two mostly-empty 250-gallon oil tanks from this guy's basement. In no less than an hour, the twenty-minute task was completed, the back door was broken, my wrist was throbbing, and everybody involved had acquired the intoxicating redolence of fossil fuel.

No time to waste. Nine o'clock was coming and I had an intramural basketball game for which I was du(al)ly exhausted and unenthusiastic. I created for myself a rather reasonable make-shift cast out of duct tape and a shopping bag and headed back to Wellness Center. The cast's intended effect, me being unable to move my wrist, resulted in my jump shots being somewhat flat. They also lacked accuracy, but that was less the cast's fault as it was my playing style. We wound up not winning that game.

Still no time to waste. It was almost ten o'clock and I had a water polo game. I'd never played water polo before and I had a lot to learn. For example, did you know that if you hang on the diving board, you lose possession? In my case, it was either that or drown, so I can't say that I'm sorry. We wound up winning that game, though not because of anything I did. I am trying to play up the idea that when I have two working hands, I'll be much more of an asset to the crew, though that's probably wishful thinking.

Can't get a break,

-Ryan