Followup

The Sports Medicine Institute was still going strong at 7 pm last night when I showed up for my followup appointment. I leaned back against the x-ray machine's film plate, which I'm sure doesn't actually contain "film" nowadays, as the technician set things up for the standard two pictures. 

Later, as I stood in the waiting room, I listened as Dr. Savoie discussed another case with the residents just outside the door.  A few minutes later he popped into the room and said, "It's looking pretty good.  Come see." The x-ray showed the somewhat diffuse fuzziness around the break indicative of the early stages of healing.  He said I could stop wearing the brace and start gradually getting back to normal activities as long as I promised not to fall.  I didn't tell him I'd already been back on the bike.  While he was there I described the stiffness and pain I've been having in my right elbow ever since the hurricane. He reached up and put his finger precisely on the spot where it hurts the most.  "Tennis elbow," he said, launching into a description of the problem and saying, basically, that it's a tough thing to get rid of.  He said he'd tried injecting all sorts of things into such elbows and that it didn't really seem to matter what it was. His impression was that the needle itself was what helped the most, causing enough irritation to stimulate the increased blood flow that is what is really needed.  His best suggestion was frequent massage, but he handed me a prescription for something that I could get the pharmacist to mix up.  I suspect it is based on horse liniment. Anyway, I walked out with the x-brace in my hand and a followup appointment in three weeks.

This morning I decided to ride over to the Reily Center to meet the 6:30 am Tulane group so I could drop off my "recreational" membership dues.  I felt kind of vulnerable riding without the brace, and after a few miles could feel a little soreness around my neck as the muscles that hadn't had to fully support my arm and shoulder got an unfamiliar workout.  I'd expected to drop off the back of the group or maybe even just ride laps around Audubon Park, but the group was doing an easy ride today so I stayed with them for a couple of laps around the park and then up onto the levee bike path, always trying to keep a couple of extra feet of space between the rider ahead and myself.  Although normal steady riding doesn't seem to be a problem at all, sudden braking definitely hurts and any kind of fall would be really painful at best.  Even so, it was a perfect morning for riding -- not too cool and not too warm, with virtually no wind at all.  I finally pulled off on the way back to drop down the ramp onto River Road and pick up Oak Street to go home.  As I came down the ramp I glanced over my left shoulder, calculating the speed and timing necessary to merge smoothly into a gap between the cars.  Then I noticed some guy who was stopped at the bottom of the ramp.  As I was contemplating my options, he picked up his bike and turned it sideways, completely blocking the path.  Sheesh.  Of course I had to hit the brakes and go around him on the grass, which meant I completely missed slotting into the traffic, so I ended up on the edge of the road for a while until a couple of cars went by and I could move away from the edge. No problem, really, but under the circumstances I'd have preferred a smoother transition.