My butt hurts

I went to medical school over the weekend and have diagnosed myself with piriformis syndrome.

The piriformis is a butt muscle, involved in rotating the hip. When it gets balled up and inflamed, it presses on the sciatic nerve, and when the sciatic nerve gets pressed on, your ass hurts. A lot. And your thigh, and maybe your knee and calf too.

The syndrome has been building for a few weeks, and became acute last Sunday as I was shuffling through a crowded IKEA and couldn't readily get off my feet. The pain was...significant.

The treatment I've prescribed for myself is a series of fun little stretches, some of which involve sitting on a tennis ball. I'll probably get acupuncture this week, and I expect I'll wind up at massage therapy too. Maybe some BodyTalk if I can afford it.

The cause of piriformis syndrome in my case is almost certainly bike-riding. And stress. I think I'll try giving up stress first.

How pitiful his tale, how rare his beauty!

Here's me, circa 1972, about to burst into my one-line duet with my pal Shawna in the Windward Theater Guild's summer production of The Pirates of Penzance.

This was on Oahu--it's important, in this instance, to picture Gilbert and Sullivan in Hawaii. For one thing, it explains the tan. I'm the serious one in the blue gingham.



How pitiful his tale, how rare his beauty. That was my bit--part of the recitative and song that begins when the bevy of General Stanley's Daughters is about to take off their shoes and stockings and go paddling, and Frederic bursts out of the shrubbery crying, "Stop, ladies, Pray!" and the female chorus, hopping one-footedly with socks in hands, sing-gasps, "A man!"

Shawna was a much better actor (and a much bigger ham) than I was, but I could hit the high notes better than she could.

She still sends me birthday cards every year. The photo just came my way via my oldest friend in England. I'm not sure how he wound up with it. The world has gotten very small.