I haven’t been talking about it because I hate to feel like I’m complaining, but I’ve been in some pain since last Sunday’s incident with Panther when he sat on my hip. For the first two days or so, my pelvis was completely out of whack, and I must have been walking funny because the pain switched to my ankle. OK, we have elastic braces and things around for that, so I put one on and hobbled around and it started to feel better.

My mistake was doing any hobbling at all, I suppose, because I wanted to be productive since I felt energized again. But instead of setting up my laptop in the bedroom like I had done when Glory was sick, I hobbled into my office and around the house. By Tuesday I was on Vicodin to cut down the screaming (OK, it really hurt at times).

Unfortunately I compounded all this folly with some more. Susan had been planning a special day with the family, including Scott and his girlfriend, and I didn’t want to let her down. Since she wanted to visit a local sake brewery, I came up with the brilliant idea of bringing my camera, so I would have an excuse to bring my new monopod, which is sturdy enough to use as a walking stick, which I needed by this time as the front of my leg now hurt when I walked.

Walking around using the monopod as a walking stick — really a cane, since I put my entire weight on it — seemed to help quite a bit. I took a few decent pictures but I did way too much walking. So by Wednesday night I was on double doses of Vicodin and luckily I found another prescription around. By this time, what with the pills and the stick, I was starting to feel a bit like Gregory House, M.D.

Today I finally actually had a seriously good idea and asked Susan to look up tendonitis, since it seemed to be things rubbing inside my leg that were hurting. Sure enough, staying in bed with an ice pack helped more than anything else I’ve tried. And hopefully, nothing else will come up, because the pain has been keeping me from focusing on writing more than anything else.