Beware of the bargin bin!

When we were young my sister used to tell people that my parents bought me from the sale table at Payless Drug Store for nine dollars. She followed it up with declaring "but God made me." What initiated this conversation escapes me at this stage of my life but at the time it was the best insult her seven year younger self could summon. Turns out it was a pretty good one.

This has stayed with me all my life. Not because it hurt my feelings. Even at the time I remember thinking this was hilarious. It has often been referred to over the years, usually in reference to my shortcomings on something as a "well, you get what you paid for" kind of follow up and rationalization. It is funny, and one of my favorite things she ever said.

Today I had a follow up PT appt. My knee has been acting up again and I can't get my damn lazy butt to kick in regardless of how hard I will it to. Considering I'm sort of training for the Corvallis Half again, this all concerns me. I asked Shawn if I had become one of those annoying clients who come in with this and that and always have something to complain about. Not at all she assured me. She said she wanted to put me through a battery of tests to see if she can figure out what is wrong. She said when someone has different nagging things in the basic area I do that often the actual cause is something entirely different.

She put me through a whole host of exercises which honestly to the outsider appeared like a sobriety test. Now hold on there I know what you're thinking, but no, I've never had a sobriety test. I do however watch all legal based shows so just back off. I raised my hands and balanced, leaned forward, backward and sideways. I was deep squatting, mid squatting and did every yoga pose known to life. She measured, hummed and said "interesting" about a million times. In the end she said "I think we've got it."

Basically, I have a whole section of my body that isn't doing it's job in the proper order, if it's doing it at all. She said it is a problem with the communication from my brain to my body and it is a sequencing problem. I'm a whole host of misfires from my mid back all the way down to my hips. Because my connections aren't picking up the line, my lower back and left leg are picking up the slack, handling all the balance and movement for my entire body. Apparently at some point, they rebel over the responsibility.

We now get the tedious prospect of retraining those dead links to work again. Sound exciting? Oh yes it is. I get to practice rolling over from front to back and back to front without the aid of my hips, legs or abs. Only my upper body can do the work.

Clearly my brain to body connection stopped when I was an infant. Isn't that when you learn to roll over?

My Corvallis Half training is on hold for the moment. My running allowance is limited to 2-4 mile runs until we get this fixed and my runs result in pain free after effects.

I hope my sanity doesn't go in the mean time, although I'm not sure that's intact anymore anyway.

The moral of this post? The next time you see a cute kid on the sale table of your local discount store don't make eye contact, just keep right on walking.