Wham-O! I'm not Supermam

So I was goofing off one summer in Buffalo,New York with my nephews on a slip and slide. I thought I might try cruising down the Slip 'n Slide set up on the lawn Silver Surfer style instead of ala Pete Rose head first into home plate... Big mistake.At the time I had no problem. Somewhere around eight that night my ankle started to feel like it was being crushed. Wham-O! I'm talking about tears streaming down your face type pain. The torque on my ankle from my jumping had caused an acute bone bruise and sprain. The body has a memory to insult and it can react the opposite of delayed gratification. In this case it was pay your dues for your mortal sin of thinking you could crash your body like a teenager. 6 Advils and several sessions of ice and elevation later I was able to get to sleep a little past midnight. Just last week I was reminded of my weekend warrior body when after taking up my secondsessions of Gaelic Football I started experiencing intense pain this time in my foot about 2 hours into my daughter's friend's birthday party that forced me to the couch and crutches for 8 hours.This time an acute sprain of my foot. The deal is that once your foot starts to swell even a little bit there are a lot of nerves down there that are not very happy. You also don't get to rest the area unless you are put in a cat or on crutches. I have patients that look at me dumbfounded regarding their hobbled condition with foot pain and I ask them what they did and they tell me I hiked or whatever and were fine at the but the reality is that your body remembers. Particularly if you have an old injury. You have to respect that

The OJ We Hardly Knew

Like a lot of kids growing up in the 70's my brother Mike and I grew up cheering for the Juice. I had an extra connection as my parents both grew up in Buffalo and my relatives were season ticket holders for the Bills so we would go up and watch them play around the holiday weekends.
OJ went to my families drugstore business in downtown Buffalo and was thought to be one of Buffalo's own; a regular sort of guy off the field. It is documented that OJ used to be very patient when filming various itterations of the Hertz Rent-A-Car commercials, the later of which, required him to be suspended from a wire harnass for hours on end.


I 'll tell you a story about OJ. I met an orthopedic surgeon at a conference in Montana who was MVP at a football camp & OJ gave the then kid an autographed football at the awards banquet
which was held in Niagara Falls. So later that night they cross paths in an elevator at the hotel & he says how he wanted to emulate his career. OJ looks him up & down and says "Fat chance kid!" OJ's pulling guard and best buddy Reggie McKenzie was with him at the time and protested "OJ why did you have to say that " And this is the best part of the story- he told me he took that football & threw it right in the trash. If I had been there I would have given the kid a standing o. Not exactly the iconic "Mean Joe Green" Coke commercial.

The truth was that OJ was cool with being OJ man of the people as long as OJ was the center of attention and adulation. Another running back, Gale Sayers wrote a book titled "I am Third". It was abook about his life and his short relationship with teammate Brian Piccolo. The title refers to the philosophy that the Lord is first, my friends and family are second and I am third. You look at our sports superstars today, Tiger Woods and the like and hope that a new generation of stars like rookie sensation Stephen Strasburg will give us sports heroes to cheer about on and off the field.