Mizblog

I heard a joke in my dream last night. An Israeli shopkeeper told me a joke about a banana. He said “You want joke?” and when I assented, he joked “Why you no like banana? Is appealing!”

I remembered a part of a dream I had last night. The snippet started after Brandon had been the victim of an aggressive driver on the street. Some guy had done something dangerous and had acted like Brandon was intentionally messing with him by using the street. Anyway, the guy stops at the next traffic signal and Brandon pulls up next to him, parks his car, gets out, and goes over to this guy’s car. Brandon opens the door and pulls the guy out onto the ground. The guy’s a short thin man with wavy light brown hair and a beard. Brandon is huge, weighing in north of 300 lbs, and a trained self defense instructor. Anyway, Brandon carefully drags the guy out and onto the hot pavement, where the guy ends up lying with his legs under his own car and his seat belt wrapped around his neck. Brandon calmly sits in his driver’s chair, secures the guy’s car so it won’t roll off, puts his foot on the guy’s chest, and calmly starts to explain to him that his behavior is unacceptable and that it could have dire consequences.

I was very impressed with Brandon’s calm, gentle violence and teaching method. Even though the guy he taught isn’t a real person, and I would never be able to pull off that maneuver, I bet it would go over well in a movie.

Today they called me back from Urgent Care to tell me that the radiologist had looked over the xray and determined that there was no crack in the rib. I’m expecting a 3 week rest and recovery period that should end July 25th.

I also saw my regular doctor today, who admonished me to not stress my ribs until they’re pain-free. He’s going to recommend some physical therapy to see if there’s something they can do to rehab my upper back, which is still tight and messed up after my two years of displaced ribs. He checked my toes and recommended an xray to see what’s going on with them. He checked my rash and accidentally rolled his chair over my toe! Right after he finished looking at it! Haha! I think I need to see a doctor. Anyway, he said that the rash looked like healing contact dermatitis and was nothing to worry about.

Finally my Navy service gave me something I wanted – free access to a BJJ seminar on July 4th!

The first series of moves we learned were the fireman’s carry takedown to knee-on-belly, then following that up with a D’Arce when they try to push your knee off. Then you can finish it on the side, or by transitioning to mount, or if they push you over you can finish it in the closed guard. That’s as far as I got before, as I was being pushed over from mount, I rolled over my belt knot and broke my rib.

The rib popped when I was on top of Chris trying to choke him (right arm wrapped around his neck) and he rolled me over onto my back. The drill was to practice finishing the choke even if you get rolled onto your back like that, and I had just executed it correctly and was doing it again. The last time, however, I rolled over onto my belt knot and *pop*. It didn’t hurt, but it felt so weird! I could feel a protrusion under the skin of my lower right rib. I was very surprised and pulled off my gi to examine this oddity. TJ got me some ice and I sat down with that for a few minutes. I kept playing around with the rib to see if I could figure out what the separate pieces were, but it just felt like there was a bump on it. I could at least breathe normally. I could even breathe deeply with a little discomfort.

Then the adrenaline started to wear off…

Over the next few minutes, the pain started to build up. I decided that I should probably go to Urgent Care and get an xray, so I packed up my stuff and went to my car. Driving was painful, but not that bad. Jamming my messed up toe was probably 50x more painful, but it only lasted a minute before it got better. This was getting worse.

At the Urgent Care facility, I expected to have to wait for a while, but the place was empty of customers. I got straight in to the xray room. The doctor then talked to me before looking at my xray and telling me he thinks I cracked a rib. He asked if I wanted to see it, and of course I did, so we went into his office to the computer. On the bottom rib there was a dark line, which could be a crack or could be the shadow of my diaphragm. He said he’d send it to a radiologist to see what they thought, but that he thought it was broken.

I kind of think he’s wrong and that the rib just separated from the cartilage, but that might be wishful thinking. Recovery time for a separated rib can be half that for a broken rib.