A year ago I was recovering from some rib trauma acquired in a fall from my truck. A few months before that, I was rehabbing a knee made sore from too many rough miles. This week I'm working on the same knee: A mishap on the ATV, on my way out of the woods, tweaked it again. What, you may ask, is my secret? In other words, how do I, at my age, continue to bounce back, year after year, from the vicissitudes of life, when others have been forced to grow up and learn from their mistakes? In a word: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, specifically ibuprofen.
"Ibu," or "Vitamin I" has been around for several decades, and can, admittedly, have side effects, but I consider it to be a miracle drug. It is a pain reducer, but, more importantly, it inhibits inflammation. Along with a bag of ice, it is the best way to make all those screaming ligaments, tendons, bones, and muscles calm down after an unplanned spill. I've used it, on the doctor's orders, to repair tears of all four. Well, OK, not bones, but everything else. Some, my in-laws, for example, refuse to use it. I'm not sure why? I guess they think it is being pushed on them by Obamacare or something. Instead, they go to the emergency room for narcotics. Narcotics fergodsake. Talk about side effects.
I was reading Stegner's memoir about growing up in turn-of-the-century Saskatchewan last night: Wolf Willow. (He grew up a hundred years ago; I was reading about it last night.) In it, Stegner talks about the long, slow, brutal demise of the plains Indians—the Sioux, the Assiniboine, the Blackfoot. Admirably, the Indians were vigorous defenders of their way of life, but the defense required great expenditures of violence. Can you imagine the sore muscles and torn ligaments at the end of a day of bareback tomahawk warfare? It must have been tough to get out of bed the next morning. All I can say is that their opponents are lucky the Sioux didn't have ibuprofen.
