Some kind of overuse injury would be in your best interest, but it will be public trans for you at least for 8 weeks.

I was thinking the same. An injury that doesn't require any serious surgery or medication and will just heal itself given enough time. My birthday is fast approaching though and I had wanted to do a century on it. Oh well...

Fascinating thread! I think with minimal editing it could be a very successful New Yorker story.

Just for the record, I got a hernia when I was 18 or 19, possibly related to having worked a summer at a tire shop. Every bigot in Eagan has to drive a massive SUV with 50 pound tires it seems, and lifting them to and from the floor to the vehicles on lifts was apparently not good to my goods. heh. My parents health insurance took care of the surgery to fix it up, and now I have my very own personal steel belted radial patch (surgical steel mesh, apparently).

Recovery was slow at first, meaning lots of hobbling around hunched over for a week or so, but then things took off and I was back to doing things pretty much normally in a month. If this does end up being the case for you, go really easy on yourself for as long as you can afterwards to give the tissue plenty of time to heal back together. Apparently if you tear it back open again it gets really hard to fix a second time.

Not to minimize the situation with some_guy282, this thread reminded me of an old joke, which i'll streamline.

Jake has been having terrible painful headaches. He sees 3 doctors, 2 are unable to identify the problem but the 3rd doctor, tells him that the pain would be eliminated by an operation to remove his testicles. He had faith in this doctor and agreed to the operation. After the operation, the pain totally dissapeared, so he decided to celebrate by buying himself new clothing. He goes to a speciality shop and the salesman helps with his clothes fitting. The salesman determined the size of his shirt, jacket, and pants. Jake was really impressed but when it came to the jocky shorts, the salesman tells him he would need a 36,


Jake says "ha!, this time you are wrong, I wear a 34",



"well........." the salesman says,




"if you wear a 34,





you'll have horrible painful headaches.

SG

lol

That was funny.

For another update, at this point I'm pretty much pain free, and have been since the day before yesterday. This is the way I felt when I was on vacation, I was fine. Only then it took me two days off the bike to get there. This time it took me five. If I start riding again I'd bet the pain would come back again like last time. I think you guys are on the money with it being some sort of a repetetive strain injury. Tendonitis...whatever. By the time my insurance paperwork is done, it will probably be healed.

I'm a little disappointed I would be able to ride on my birthday though, and there's a blizzard outside right now I would have loved to commute through. Seriously.

It's probably not steel.. We put in a synthetic mesh and nonabsorbable sutures to hold it in/on. Some people use these useless spiral tacks to hold them in if they do it via a scope.

Unless you were 18 or 19 50 years ago in which case I don't know what they put in back then.

Hey, you are playing with fire here. SEE A GODDAM DOCTOR!!! Now, not next week. Unless of course, you have no use for your right nut.

I said "next week" a week ago. Now it's tomorrow.

Get it checked out and then buy a recumbent.
When you are streaking down the street with
a lawn chair under your butt your nuts won't
hurt anymore. Neither will your hands, arms
neck or back. It is BLISS!

(PLEASE NOTE: an mp3 player may enhance the quality of the ride.)

Ned Goudy

Easy Racer EZ1-SC http://www.easyracers.com/ez_1_sc.htm
Lightning Thunderbolt http://www.lightningbikes.com/thunderbolt.htm

More and more of us are in the uninsured situation. I'm thinking there is a voting majority to put socialized medicine in place.

So I saw the doctor yesterday and as I thought it would be, it was very similar to last week. He took a look at me and I told him how I was feeling. I did tell him one thing I didn't tell the physician's assistant last week, because I only remembered it the day before I saw him. I don't know why I remembered it, but it suddenly popped into my head. I remembered I did have an injury in the nads all the way back in early September. It's an embaressing story though so I wont tell it. The pain went away after two days back then and I forgot about it.

He concurs that it is likely either a repetetive strain injury, or a repetetive trauma injury. There's no hernia, no signs of cancer, and it is highly doubtful that it is something viral because the pain wouldn't have gone away so quickly. As I type this I'm still pain free, but if I remember the spot or concentrate on it I'll feel it there.

He didn't give me a time frame on how long he thinks it'll be before it heals, but said that I should wait until it is completely gone, and then gradually starting to ride again a week and a half or two weeks after that. It probably will be completely gone in another few weeks when the insurance goes through, but if it's not I'll look into some fancy scans being done to see if it's not more serious. The Doc didn't think so though and I agree.

He made a couple of recommendations like getting a new saddle, etc. So that's where I stand now. A month and a half off the bike at least. I guess I'll have to content myself for now with making unnecessary upgrades to my bike.