You shall know me by my limping

Plus some links!

No Bird installment this week. She’ll be back next week.

On March 8, 2025, I was on an eight mile training¹ run and at mile seven, the arch of my right foot started to hurt in a new way. Weird, I thought, and ran the last mile figuring it would sort itself out.

By that afternoon, my ankle was the size of a softball. Weird, I thought, but I’m sure it will sort itself out.

I worked Nash Yarn Fest and was on my feet for hours and hours, which meant as much ibuprofen as it was medically appropriate to take because I was in a not-small amount of pain. By the time I got home, my ankle was even more swollen. My walk was more like a hop-and-drag.

So I took myself to the urgent clinic, where the PA admired how large my ankle was. There were x-rays, which confirmed no broken bones, which seemed ideal.² She wasn’t sure what was happening but clearly something was so I was referred to a sports medicine³ orthopedist in Delhi, a tiny town about a 30 minute drive away. His soonist appointment was a week out.

Which…fine. What’s one more week? Then we’ll get this all figured out and I’ll be back to running. No need to defer my half marathon entry. Or, if I can’t run that far, I can just drop down to the 5K.

The sports medicine doc diagnosed posterior tibial tendon tendonitis with a possible stress fracture. The prescription was classic RICE plus PT. While he was relatively certain it should clear up in a few weeks, we scheduled an appointment for four weeks out.

Reader: it did not clear up.

Finally, my insurance company was willing to pay for an MRI. The closest appointment was two weeks out in Cobleskill, which is 40 minutes from my house in the opposite direction from the route I’d take to Delhi.

A brief pause here: All of this driving is one of the things few people talk about when they talk about rural healthcare. Yes, our system has most of the medical professionals you might want; however, NONE OF THEM ARE IN THE SAME PLACE. Oh, and also, there aren’t enough of them to get appointments quickly. Unlike a large city where there might be a dozen cardiologists in the same hospital, we might have one who spreads her time between four different offices that are scattered across hundreds of miles.⁴

I have so many advantages, mind. My insurance is pretty good. My work schedule is fairly flexible. I have a car and can drive. I know how to make the phone calls needed to get the system to work. But maybe half of the people who live here do not have all of those advantages.

Back to the story…

The MRI revealed that the tendonitis is actually a torn muscle and a really torn tendon. Sports medicine guy called me⁵ to talk over the results.

“I’m going to refer you to the podiatrist who knows ankles,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “I’m going to go ahead and run the 5K, tho. That’ll be fine?”

*silence*

“But are you still in pain?” he asked.

“I mean…yes.⁶ But it’s just a 5K.”

*judgmental silence*

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said.⁷

This conversation was mid-April. The earliest the ankle person⁸ could see me was August 11.⁹

So this is where I am. I haven’t really run since early March and am doing a poor job of managing normal life stresses without that outlet.¹⁰ I can kinda walk without pain if I wear my new pair of Brooks Glycerins, which were recommended by the PT. I’ll find out soon (maybe) if surgery and/or a boot is in my future. And then I’ll discover how long it will take to schedule surgery and how far I’ll need to travel for that to happen. Will my injury be a year old before I can get back to something approximating normal?

I mention all of this not (just) to complain but to highlight some fundamental flaws in our health care system. And it’s only going to get worse. The current administration’s choice to cancel a bunch of visas will lead to even fewer doctors in our rural hospitals. The current U.S. House budget would de-stabilize Medicare and Medicaid so much that rural systems would face bankruptcy quickly.

To say nothing, of course, in the general increase in needless suffering.

Are we great again yet?

Anyway: some links—

• This story makes me suddenly realize the backstory behind a bunch of conversations about solar with constituents I’ve had lately.

• How much will you pay for Made in the USA?

• The step between “Dr. Oz” and “Nazi” is not a big one.

• Your emergency Feel Better kit.

• Ultrarunner John Kelly is writing/has written a great couple of posts on applying the lessons he’s learned at Barkley (and other long races) to any large project, including a) his tech business that uses AI for something-something medical and b) his current attempt at a Fastest Known Time for the Appalachian Trail. He’s a pretty smart guy and worth a read, even if you don’t run or code.

  Sample quote:

  

• Here’s what we forget when we start cutting government services: No one knows when they don’t die.

• It’s PUFFIN-FLINGING TIME.

• Blair Braverman went out into the frozen wilderness with a commercially available bug-out bag. It got philosophical.

• Stormwater management and Tom Holland.¹¹

• This Fallen World would be more tolerable with more mascots.

  

• Re: the above quote—If you haven’t read Terry Pratchett, you’re only hurting yourself. Here’s why you should and where to start.

• SHOW ME THE LIES.

• I cannot even: Elon’s town.

• A retired journalist is on a cruise around the world. It is not going well, which is to our benefit.¹²¹³

1. for the May 4 Frederick Running Fest half marathon

2. a broken bone would have been the simplest outcome…

3. can I mention how flattered I was to be referred to a SPORTS MEDICINE guy? Like the PA said “you are clearly active and we want to keep you that way” and I was so flattered I can’t even tell you.

4. *ominous music grows louder*

5. we decided I didn’t really need to drive to Delhi again just to talk about the MRI.

6. reader: I could barely walk

7. I was reading something and stumbled across the quote “you have to schedule downtime or it will schedule you” and oooof.

8. Her office, btw, is in Cooperstown, which is about 30 minutes in a totally new direction from my house.

9. because of a couple of phone calls, I could get this moved up to June 11. Which prompts a whole other conversation about privilege but this is already long enough.

10. yes, I am riding a stationary bike and doing strength training and PT and I hate every minute of all of it

11. This, my friends, is an absolute delight.

12. I heard about the Villa Vie on the podcast Hyperfixed, which I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND. The episode I forced my husband to listen to was this one and he became a fan. You might too.

13. If you need convincing on his storytelling: “As I was saying to Oleg, the Russian acrobat who kept buying me tequila shots at the hotel bar, shit has gotten weird around here the last few weeks.” How can you not want to keep reading? Are you stone?