After the trailer MRI by a Radiologist likely located half way around the world, I wasn’t expecting much in terms of a call back.  A voice message from the Orthopedic’s nurse perhaps.  Shoot, assuming there was no big news to relate, I’d be good with a text.  I personally could not read into the picture I took of the MRI scan, but I did have my own guess.  I side with my primary care physician.  She thinks I have a tear in the tendons connecting the abdomen to the symphysis pubis.  It feels that way to me and I could see that taking a long time to heal without proper rehab.  I don’t know enough about sports hernias to say anything intelligent, but a hernia does not sound like the sort of thing I would be running marathons with or hauling up 14,000 foot peaks on the Colorado Trail.  My optimism might be biased by wanting to avoid the potential surgery required for a sports hernia.  So that was my frame of mind as I waited for the call back.

Dr. William Williams called me on my mobile tonight at 7:19 MST.  He used a lot of big words and never definitively committed to anything.  It might as well had been Alan Greenspan who called me.  I’ll be much more direct in my translation.  My symphysis pubis is arthritic.  This is apparently rare in this type of joint.  Dr WW then lectured for several minutes tangentially on the different types of joints and how the symphysis isn’t really a joint anymore than spinal vertebrae.  But it sort of is a joint.  He’d either made his point or realized I was no longer responding and returned to topic.  He exhorted that a hernia is still possible but less likely now given my symptoms.  The advised treatment for the arthritis is a steroid shot and he thinks he might know someone who could administer such a thing if I were interested.  I am.  He’ll talk to Heather. I envisioned my eye doctor’s clinic where the eye glass and frame shop seem to exist as separate entities yet within the same building.  This guy distances himself from the dealers. The upside is that a positive response to the steroids would further suggest I don’t have a hernia.  Or perhaps the upside is that I’ll now have a fairly valid subterfuge for a medicinal marijuana card.