Doctor's Report

After a deep-tissue massage last night, I woke up this morning with an extremely sore rib. It's been about 3 weeks since my kayaking incident when my ribs first started to ache. Today, it hurts to cough! Since the pain is still persisting, I decided to buckle down and see the doctor. Not a small feat, considering I'm a new patient and don't have a doctor yet. The clinic within walking distance down the street got me in this afternoon. Yeah! Guess that's one small perk of working in biomed research; I'm usually close to the clinical side of things--literally. After being juggled from one waiting room to the next, I finally saw the doc. He felt around and said I was probably aggravating the injury by continuing to be really active (a.k.a. weight-lifting, swimming, biking, running). He said it was probably a bruised rib or strained muscle and to lay off the activity for a week to let things heal. I got a chest x-ray too just to rule out fracture. Fun, fun! Anyway, I've decided (begrudgingly) to postpone swimming and weights for a week, but to replace this with running (nurturing the knee) and biking. That will help keep me on track for the Devil Dog Duathlon in 2 weeks. Maybe I'll bike more on the trainer since that seems to allow me to lay off my rib muscles (going up hills really aggravates my rib). Hope the Devil Dog isn't hilly!