Something Other Than Illinibucks For Professor Arvan

I've had some recent experiences where life seems to imitate what we studied last semester. 

Something bad happened to my right foot.  It ultimately proved to be a stress fracture, but it took quite a while to conclude that was the cause.  Here's the story.

I got a pain in the ball of my right foot about a week earlier.  Such pains are not that unusual for me.  I had that happen a couple of times during our course, but in the left foot.  After a few days, the pain would go away.  So in this case, I did nothing about it, hoping for the same outcome.   For a few days, it did seem to be getting better.  But then it started to get worse (which is probably when the fracture occurred, from walking on the foot in an awkward way so as to reduce the pain).  After a day or so of that I made an appointment to see my health provider. 

The physical exam revealed a lot of tenderness and swelling in the foot.  They also ordered x-rays.  They revealed an old injury but no new problem.  An appointment with a podiatrist was made for 10 days later. 

I was very disappointed with this outcome.  There was a lot of pain and I wanted them to do something then and there to treat it.  They prescribed medication to reduce the swelling.  And they had given me some meds for the pain, but I thought that was too mild.  They didn't give me any external protection for the foot.  I was told to keep the foot elevated (good advice).  Yet I was pretty convinced that wasn't sufficient for the foot to heal by itself.

So I did something I wouldn't normally encourage others to do.  I wrote an impassioned letter to the guy who did the surgery on my shoulder back in 2012, asked him whether he could look at my x-rays, and if he could offer any access to treatment that would help.  He took my letter to heart. He got me into seeing a podiatrist this past Monday, in effect, jumping the line.  I was pretty desperate so didn't feel guilty about getting privileged treatment this way. 

They did another set of x-rays.  The new ones (barely) showed a stress fracture.  What I learned from the experience is that a stress fracture takes time to be visible under x-ray.  So the first time around, it simply wasn't visible at all.  They based their recommendation for treatment more on the x-rays than on the physical exam.  (Think about our discussions of monitoring and whether it reveals shirking or not.) 

This time they gave me a removable boot to wear that protects the foot, makes it much less painful while walking, and should expedite the healing.  I also got stronger pain meds, but had to make a special request for that. 

I am now in recovery mode (it takes about 8 weeks to heal) and partly telling this story because I'm looking for light hearted entertainment to bide my time.  If you have any more jokes like the ones we did as quizzes in class, please post those as comments or send to me in email.  And if you have any other sorts of entertainment you might recommend (stuff your parents or grandparents might like) you can post on that as well. 

I hope your semester has gotten off well for those of you who remain on campus.  And for those of you have graduated and left the area, I'm also curious about what you are doing now.  Whatever that is, I hope life is treating you well.

Best,

Professor Arvan