health – Complaint Hub

It would have been a disappointing time

Originally uploaded by thetejon

Except that I haven’t run in months. My first 10K since my foot surgery was both my worst time ever and a great success. My official time was 57:48, a 9:18 pace, which is well off my personal best of 49:38, but that personal best was in April, and since then I’ve had foot surgery and run less than 20 miles total, I don’t think this was so bad. It was frustrating to be so slow, and to not have that extra bit at the end. But after more than five months of almost no running, I expected it. I like the course – it’s at West Potomac Park, just south of the Mall, and right on the water. It’s flat and wide and scenic. The Run Geek Run 8K is going to be at the same place in a few weeks, and I’m thinking about running it, but I know I won’t have much of a chance to run between now and then, so I won’t do much better than I did this weekend.

Running, cramping

I went running today for the first time since before my surgery. Things were going great for the first mile and a quarter. My toe didn’t really hurt, and I was feeling pretty good. Then I got a leg cramp. I’ve never had one before from running. I talked to my sister, and she thinks it’s because “the surgery changed the biomechanics of [my] running”. That sounds feasible. I was trying to run normally on the bad foot, but I’m sure I wasn’t. But it was a good start. I ended up, according to Map My Run, running about 1.4 miles then walking 1.6. Next time I expect to do better. I don’t have much time to get ready for my 10K.

Clean bill of health for me, but no baby yet

Just got back from the podiatrist – I am completely medically cleared to run, jump, dance, and generally frolic about on my surgically repaired foot. If you are looking for a podiatrist in the DC area, I highly recommend Dr. Ian Beiser. Every aspect of my experience with him and his practice was excellent, and I will definitely go back next time I’m in need of podiatric (is that a word? Firefox doesn’t think so, but Firefox’s dictionary is often a bit lacking.) services. That means I can play flag football this weekend if I’m up to it, and I can slowly start getting ready for my 10K next month (Although with about 30 days to go, I can’t imagine I’m going to be all that prepared). But there’s no baby yet. The wife has an appointment today, and maybe they’ll have something insightful to tell us, but as far as I know we’re just waiting. We have until September 24th before they’ll induce her, and I think that will be plenty of time. I’ve been trying to tell the kid about how great it is out here, but it doesn’t seem convinced.

I’m wearing a left shoe!

It will be six weeks on Wednesday since I had my foot surgery, and today I wore two shoes to work. For many of you, that may not seem like a big deal. You probably wear two shoes to work every day. But try only wearing one for a while. Better yet, try only wearing one because your foot is so swollen that it won’t fit into the shoe. Then you’ll see. So the foot is a little uncomfortable in the shoe, but not terrible. And I brought the boot, just in case. But I’m hoping to make it through the day with my shoe on.

BMI is bunk

I’ve said many times before that we should stop computing BMI (Body Mass Index), we should stop basing any sort of judgments on it, and we should just stop even remembering that it exists. It’s a terrible measure of health, and it mistakenly classifies all sorts of people as healthy or unhealthy. Well, now I can say the same thing again. But this time with science! Chad Orzel, physicist and new father, says:

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has ever put the stats for their favorite pro athlete into a BMI calculator (you want to tell Michael Strahan he’s obese?), but it’s nice to see it holds more widely.

He references a NYT article that I won’t bother to read because, frankly, the NYT gets on my nerves. But it says just what I said above – if you use BMI to judge a person’s health, you’re going to be wrong much of the time.

Getting back to running

I just saw the doctor this morning about my foot. He says it’s healing nicely, and I got a less bulky bandage that makes it a little easier to walk. He also told me that I should be able to start running again in about six weeks. So, to celebrate my return, I’m going to do the Boo! Run for Life on October 12th, a 10K to benefit the Dean R. O’Neill Renal Cell Cancer Research Fund. It should be fun. West Potomac Park is a nice, easy 10K course. It’s flat and there’s plenty of room. And it will be good motivation to get me running again.

Am I immune to codeine?

The busted foot is not feeling too great today. I’ve been icing it, and moving my ankle around to keep the blood flowing, but it’s still bothering me. So, I figured I’d try out the Tylenol 3 that they prescribed for me. I finished the work I really needed to get done this week, had some lunch, and took two of them. Well, that was disappointing. Friends had assured me that Tylenol 3 was pretty good stuff – it would definitely take care of my foot. Unfortunately, they were lying. I think it made me a little drowsy, but it sure didn’t help my foot much. The only thing that really seems to help is icing it, and that’s only for twenty minutes at a time. So, I’m left here to complain about it. Fortunately I have lots of practice.

You’d think it would be great

You’d think being ordered to sit around the house and do nothing would be great, but it sure sucks. The bright side of the surgery is that I haven’t had any pain to speak of, at least not yet. It’s uncomfortable, but not really painful. Haven’t touched the drugs yet. The downside is that, despite having work to do, I’m already bored out of my mind. I’ve made progress with the report I’m working on for my real job, but it’s not interesting work, and it’s hard to stay focused.

Foot surgery is awesome

I had my bunion removed this morning. Right now, I’m sitting on the couch with my foot up, wondering how much it’s going to hurt as the anesthetic wears off. They told me it would be six to eight hours, and the surgery was eight hours ago. Right now I mostly just feel pressure. They wrapped it pretty tight. If it hurts, I have some great drugs, so I should be fine. But I’d rather not have to use them. I guess we’ll see. If you are looking to have surgery, I highly recommend the Center for Ambulatory Surgery at 19th and L NW. From beginning to end, everyone was friendly, helpful, and professional. I can’t speak to the results yet, but so far so good. Too bad it’s the All Star break – this would be a great time to watch some baseball.

Pregnant wife bonus

One of the nice things about having a pregnant wife is that, when a recipe calls for white wine, she can’t help you finish the bottle. Just kidding. We have a bottle of white wine, a 2006 Primaterra pinot grigio. So, now we can calculate the Complaint Hub Wine Score.

Alcohol Review gives it 3.25 stars. We’ll convert that to a 100 point scale, multiplying by 20 to get 65. They say it costs $7, and it was on sale at Whole Foods, so we’ll give it a PPD of 9.29. That’s a pretty decent score.
It’s Italian, so no California Penalty.
Again, no Australia or New Zealand Bonus.
It’s got a pretty solid label. It’s a cheap wine, so I don’t expect much, and the label is different, but it’s not doofy. Plus 10.
Multiply by Planck’s Constant.
Planck’s Constant is really small. No one wants a wine score in scientific notation. So let’s open up Open Office Spreadsheet and do some formula magic. First, let’s take the arc cotangent, which gives us 1.57. You can quibble about significant digits in the comments.
That’s still not a good number. So we divide one by the natural log of that, which gives us 2.21.
I’m not a huge fan of white wine, so let’s multiply by 50 and subtract a 25 point White Wine Penalty.
Then we round down, because the digits after the decimal were never really significant anyway. And we’re left with 63. So you see, this is clearly a good wine rating system, since it’s right in line with the score from another website! The wine tastes fine. Not too sweet, not too dry. It pairs well with a seitan picatta from Veggie Times. It probably has some flavor notes of something. Maybe fruit? White’s usually have fruit notes, right? In conclusion, it’s a nice value at $7.