Hello my friends! I am Dr. Ricardo Salvay, an accredited medical professional of sports medicine and owner of multiple correspondence school degrees from various Internet institutions with a reputation. And like you I am a fan of sports! So welcome to my sports injury column! As a young Sicilian child growing up in the inner city just outside of my family’s palatial estate, I achieved great pleasure through the playing of American sports like Monkey In The Middle and 52 Pick-Up with the servants’ many larger children. This is why I became an accredited medical professional of sports after I tried to become a handsome movie actor in Hollywood and New York, and this is why I have created this sports column to talk to you about injuries in sports. So let’s start the talk!
Right now, superstar baseball slugger Albert Pujols is thinking about surgery to fix his elbow. What he has is called “Tommy John,” named after the guy that did the surgery first! Now, I don’t know about you, but I would be worried! Right now, Albert Pujols is kicking the snot out of the roundball, having another great St. Louis season. So why would he want to do screw up all that for a surgery? Obviously he is better than fine right now, and there is always a risk of dying when you go under the gas. You open yourself up for infection, more disease, and even another surgery. I knew a friend of a friend who went in for a simple colonoscopy, and ended up losing his left leg! Surgery, like most things, is a crapshoot, so watch out Albert!
I am afraid that I am thinking that he is thinking that his “Tommy John” injury is helping him hit the way that “Tommy John” is helping out all sorts of pitchers. In case you are not aware of this true fact, pitchers with “Tommy John” add an average of 3-5 MPH to their fastball than when they didn’t have “Tommy John.” However, the key here is that as a HITTER, Albert Pujols does not have a fastball. He swings the bat, and the motions for throwing and swinging are completely different — they use different motions, for one. Also, the bat for the hitter does what the arm does for the pitcher. Meaning it does all the work for them. So when you have a bat, why worry about your elbow, which doesn’t have to move much when hitting?
A plus for Albert is that he is also only a first base, so he has to maybe make one or two throws a month, and that’s during a busy month! If he were actually making lots of throws, then it would be an issue. But the elbow ligament is very tenacious and tough. It has the consistency of a tight and cold rubber band, meaning that it can bounce back easily after warm stretching. If he wants to be extra careful, he should keep his elbow at a 50-degree angle after throwing for no longer than 20 seconds — that will give the ligament time to get back into shape!
Speaking of “in shape,” Pujols is also in trouble with something called plantar fasciitis, which is Latin for “foot problem.” Put in simple terms, he has troubles with standing on his feet for a long time. Now the traditional approach taken by a lot of doctors would have him massage the area of effect, and staying off his feet as much as he can. But I am no traditionalist! I am a believer of tough love. When my parents took away my weekend car after a bad report card, and forced me to go to the club parties in my weekday car, it taught me a valuable lesson about who you get the test answers from. And this is the lesson that Albert must teach his feet.
Foremost, he should do everything standing up — walking, talking, sleeping, eating, even sitting! And he should do it with extra weight on his back. If amateur joggers can put cinder blocks in their backpacks and run for 3 hours straight, why can’t a professional do the same good while not moving? After standing long enough, he will pass what is called the “pain threshold,” and after passing this enough times the problem will soon be back in the past.
I believe people need to stop babying their bodies and instead put them through the motions! If we weren’t tough, then the dinosaurs would have eaten us, and there would be many more cases of alien anal probing. But we humans are tough people, and we should act like it and stop being injury babies. Like they said, you attract more injuries and disease with honey than with vinegar. So the next time you have a pain in your wrist or your back, or you throw up repeatedly and have multi-colored expectorate and your urine is the color of a bag of Skittles candy, don’t just pick up the phone and bug your doctor again. Just take a deep breath and “ride out the wave,” for better or worse. And it will be for the better. You will thank me for that when you can, I non-legally-binding guarantee!
And that is it for today’s first column! I hope you had fun enjoying it. Until next time, it is Dr. Ricardo Salvay that says, “Get the ball!”
Dr. Ricardo Salvay received his Health Records Management certificate from Ashworth University Online.