Ouch!!!

Editorial Note: I had written a different piece for today, but since I am somewhat gainfully employed in a period of time when nobody is, I thought better of posting it.  I let discretion and my love of expensive tomahawk steaks prevail and put the post on hold. In its place I am writing about my groin.

Several weeks ago, or it might have been several days -- this forced hermitting in my house has done a number on my circadian rhythms -- I wrote about a visit to my doctor. I have been having excruciating pain in my upper thigh muscles which I thought might have been caused by my excessive ass sitting.

The doctor prescribed steroids, ice and heat packs. Well, that did not alleviate the pain which left me in agony and made my walking look like that of a geriatric. Like a 45 year old man. So I did what I never do and got a second opinion. This time from my OSCAR insurance covered doctor who plies his wares for UCLA Healthcare.

His office is at the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City. The UCLA Healthcare facility is located across from the JC Penney and behind the Cinnabon.

It's a little odd having your medical issues tended to in the same building where kids are buying the new Jordan sneakers and moms are buying wire support bras.

I hate to sound snobby, but I prefer my out of pocket doctor in Century City. In the huge black medical center building appropriately located on Avenue of the Stars. In fact, I've run into several stars while entering and exiting my preferred medical edifice.

Once, while waiting for my valet-parked car to be returned I saw James Gandolfini. He was hunched over and disappointingly not as tall as I had hoped. I like my Northern New Jersey Mafioso Kingpins to look a little more kingly, like 6'3" or taller. Tony Soprano was more my height. And equally burly. Given enough tequila, I'm pretty sure I could've taken Tiny Tony down.

But I digress.

Turns out, according to my new Sports Medicine doctor, I did not have bursitis, as originally diagnosed.  After much torquing, twisting and otherwise contorting my hips and legs in ways they should not be contorted, the doc suggested I had pulled a groin muscle.

He showed my some graphic charts, explained the nature of the injury and why it could take up to several months to heal.

Meaning this will probably not be the last post on this topic. If football season ever returns I will never again scoff at a multi-millionaire dollar paid athlete for sitting on the sidelines with a similar injury. You'll never hear me scream at the TV again...

"Come on Edelman, it's just a groin pull, get back in the game and make the Tribe proud."

And though it happened months ago, the doctor correctly identified the source of the groin pulling.

He thinks, and I'm sure he's right, that it happened when I was deadlifting weights in my garage. Which, by the way, sounds a lot more manly than a case of bursitis.

The deadlift is the most appropriately named of all the lifting exercises. It's also the simplest. You put as much weight as you possibly can, for those with home gyms that means every plate you have, and you try and lift it.



It's a good bet I won't be doing these again.

In fact, unless you're training to lift a schoolbus off a child trapped under the wheel well, I don't know why anybody would.