Perhaps a tad early…but with so little happening on the forum as of late.
Milos Raonic has announced that he will miss this year's French Open Championships. I saw him play Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinal's last year at Roland Garros. The match itself was very expensive to see…and very, very boring. Between this match and one that featured Maria Sharapova I needed five or six cups of strong coffee to stay awake. Seriously…I was nodding off. Going to sleep with rabid Canadian fans on the right of "The Ugly American" and a beautiful Russian woman on my left…with whom I engaged in some rather interesting conversation. You know…Putin, Obama, Sharapova and her daughters tennis development. That sort of thing. It was an interesting experience…but the tennis was numbing.
But Milos has succumbed to a condition that sort of drove me out of tennis and bothered me immensely when I embarked upon my golfing career. He had a "Morten's Neuroma" in his foot. Apparently he has had surgery for this condition and I find it very interesting that it is taking him longer than he thought it would to recover from it.
When I first went to my doctor in Dearborn, Michigan about this condition at the Henry Ford Medical Center he told me that my options were a foot pad, then cortisone treatment and finally surgery if neither of the first two worked. I sort of scoffed at the idea of the foot pad. I looked at my doctor and sort of said to him…I don't think you understand how badly this thing hurts. It was excruciating. It felt as if there was a red hot poker penetrating the joint of my "ring toe" on my right foot. The cortisone idea wasn't so completely out of the question but the surgery that he mentioned came with the possibility of leaving part of my foot numb as the condition is a nerve condition.
I opted for none of the above and instead went over the bridge to Windsor, Canada to see an acupuncture guy that my old friend Leon referred me to. A Korean fellow as I recall. He had me strip down to my underwear and gave me the eyeball exam…sort of looking at me as the little old Japanese guy in "The Karate Kid" movie might mysteriously look at one. As if he were personally observing all of the meridians of energy in my body. Then it was needle time and I laid down on his table bed and he inserted some very thin needles in various points of my body to get the flow of "Chi" going properly. He attached a wire with a small alligator clip to each needle that was attached to some kind of battery device that gave the needles some electric current. He adjusted to current to my comfort zone. Then he had me turn over and he repeated the procedure with needles on my other side. When he took each of the needles out he put some heat on each point with something burning or smouldering that smelled like some sort of strong herb.
It seems to me that after two treatments the condition never returned to me…to this very day. After that experience I would return to "Dr. Needles" whenever some sort of ailment or sports like injury would bother me. Tendenitis here or there…hip injury. Back problems. Quitting smoking. I used to make a list before I went to him like a grocery list. He never failed to cure what was ailing me. I was paying him fifty dollars per treatment out of my pocket as opposed to going to the Henry Ford Medical Center for free as part of my health coverage from work.
After the acupuncture treatments I would walk out of his office feeling like I was glowing. It seemed that my awareness was so heightened that I could read everybody's mind on the street. It used to occur to me to go to him once a week just for maintenance…I would have if he had been around the corner or in the neighbourhood. Needless to say…I considered this guy to be a miracle worker. The last I heard was that he had come down with an inoperable brain tumor himself. Apparently something that even his needles couldn't overcome.
I wonder of Milos ever tried the acupuncture route.
Milos Raonic has announced that he will miss this year's French Open Championships. I saw him play Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinal's last year at Roland Garros. The match itself was very expensive to see…and very, very boring. Between this match and one that featured Maria Sharapova I needed five or six cups of strong coffee to stay awake. Seriously…I was nodding off. Going to sleep with rabid Canadian fans on the right of "The Ugly American" and a beautiful Russian woman on my left…with whom I engaged in some rather interesting conversation. You know…Putin, Obama, Sharapova and her daughters tennis development. That sort of thing. It was an interesting experience…but the tennis was numbing.
But Milos has succumbed to a condition that sort of drove me out of tennis and bothered me immensely when I embarked upon my golfing career. He had a "Morten's Neuroma" in his foot. Apparently he has had surgery for this condition and I find it very interesting that it is taking him longer than he thought it would to recover from it.
When I first went to my doctor in Dearborn, Michigan about this condition at the Henry Ford Medical Center he told me that my options were a foot pad, then cortisone treatment and finally surgery if neither of the first two worked. I sort of scoffed at the idea of the foot pad. I looked at my doctor and sort of said to him…I don't think you understand how badly this thing hurts. It was excruciating. It felt as if there was a red hot poker penetrating the joint of my "ring toe" on my right foot. The cortisone idea wasn't so completely out of the question but the surgery that he mentioned came with the possibility of leaving part of my foot numb as the condition is a nerve condition.
I opted for none of the above and instead went over the bridge to Windsor, Canada to see an acupuncture guy that my old friend Leon referred me to. A Korean fellow as I recall. He had me strip down to my underwear and gave me the eyeball exam…sort of looking at me as the little old Japanese guy in "The Karate Kid" movie might mysteriously look at one. As if he were personally observing all of the meridians of energy in my body. Then it was needle time and I laid down on his table bed and he inserted some very thin needles in various points of my body to get the flow of "Chi" going properly. He attached a wire with a small alligator clip to each needle that was attached to some kind of battery device that gave the needles some electric current. He adjusted to current to my comfort zone. Then he had me turn over and he repeated the procedure with needles on my other side. When he took each of the needles out he put some heat on each point with something burning or smouldering that smelled like some sort of strong herb.
It seems to me that after two treatments the condition never returned to me…to this very day. After that experience I would return to "Dr. Needles" whenever some sort of ailment or sports like injury would bother me. Tendenitis here or there…hip injury. Back problems. Quitting smoking. I used to make a list before I went to him like a grocery list. He never failed to cure what was ailing me. I was paying him fifty dollars per treatment out of my pocket as opposed to going to the Henry Ford Medical Center for free as part of my health coverage from work.
After the acupuncture treatments I would walk out of his office feeling like I was glowing. It seemed that my awareness was so heightened that I could read everybody's mind on the street. It used to occur to me to go to him once a week just for maintenance…I would have if he had been around the corner or in the neighbourhood. Needless to say…I considered this guy to be a miracle worker. The last I heard was that he had come down with an inoperable brain tumor himself. Apparently something that even his needles couldn't overcome.
I wonder of Milos ever tried the acupuncture route.
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