lose control

if you were paying attention, my brother had surgery yesterday. he survived. zaz! or.... double zaz!

so yeah, surgery. the story. last summer, while doing his manly duty of lifting weights, he suddenly felt a pain in his shoulder. he stopped lifting and saw the trainer. eventually he saw doctors who told him to just hang out and see what happens. so months go by and he practices, in pain, with the team. the season starts. meanwhile, he goes to seattle with his team for a tournament and gets a new pain - in his foot. not related. when he comes back, he is diagnosed with planter fasciitis (plant-her fash-e-eye-tis). scary stuff that planter crap, also known as the flip flop disease. ironically, last summer my mother was diagnosed with planter fasciitis. the two main groups of people who get this: young athletes (brother) and middle-aged women (mother). no signs that at risk people include unemployed, inactive 27 year olds living at home. safe. yes!

and what does shoulder pain + foot pain = ? red shirting! good for brother. bad for me. part of my grand plan, which has proven foilable on multiple occassions in the past few months, was to spend a few months upon my return from europe (before leaving for afrika) watching him play basketball. my youngest brother, eric, plays basketball for the university of mary in bismarck, nd, an excellent division 2 school. he is basically their star. and then he red shirted. so now he is not playing, i am not watching him, which kind of sucks. of course, i would love to have been able to spend this time cheering on the team, but not possible. i mean, i guess i could. but no. i mean, i cheer them on in spirit, but not in person. not super interested in going to games when my brother is not playing. you get the point.

anyway, my brother gets his planter fasciitis fixed. (thanks partly to me - i got him a "how to fix planter fasciitis book" for christmas. partly thanks to his doctors who made shoe thingies for him to wear. mostly thanks to me, of course.) but the shoulder pain does not go away. so finally they send him under the knife to get fixed. we think it worked, but won't know for a few months until he can work out again. basically, his clavicle bone super-grew, or his tendons shrunk, mostly likely his clavicle super-grew and he had bone rubbing on bone in his shoulder. so the doc shaved off his bone and the bone should now form scar tissue which will work as tendon. or something like that.

the good part? my little brother is home for the weekend. the bad? we have to wait on him. :) kind of. he's getting better but his left arm just hangs out like a gimp. kinda like kevin spacey (dreamy!) in usual suspects. in any case, the team won last night (zaz!) and are playing right now. the parents and the brother are downstairs watching the game and i am up here enjoying my italian margarita. mmmm. delish!

i originally meant to write about my little bro red shirting months ago, when he was on tv. he was on this show - mauraders weekly. i'm pretty sure this link is not to his actual interview, since i'm so behind. but i thought i would put it up anyway. he was so cute on the show! he did really good. and his coach was kind of funny. instead of planter fasciitis, he said "plasher fannyitis." which is just silly. plasher fannyitis!