For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, I’ve missed about four or five karate classes so far.

It’s an interesting situation. The last class that I was in ended with kumite, which is fine. It’s not something that I’m particularly good at, but it helps you learn how to use the stuff that you’re learning, right? What’s most frustrating about it for me is that I can’t wear my glasses because it poses a risk: They could get knocked off, broken, or cause an eye injury if the sparring partner should lose control of their attacks or some other mistake happens.

So it’s rather ironic that I got nailed so hard partially because of the fact that I can’t wear my glasses during a match. Heh. Of course, my sparring partner is definitely to blame as well.

The guy came at me with a kick, then a punch, and then topped it off with a palm strike. Now, I figure that a palm strike isn’t necessarily allowed to begin with, so that last bit shouldn’t have happened. However, I left myself wide open and he took the opening. I can’t really hold that against him, though I do wish that he would have controlled the force of his strike.

I blocked his kick with a double down block and blocked his punch with - IIRC - an outside block of sorts. This left my draw hand back at my hips and my other hand out at the side from where I had blocked the punch. Like I said, my chest was wide open for a strike. This was sloppy of me, but hey, I admit to not being very good at this.

By this time we were pretty much face-to-face. His two attacks had carried him close enough for me to easily grab his gi if I had thought to have done so. So when he threw his palm strike there wasn’t a whole lot of space between us.

When it nailed me it landed just to the left of the center of my chest. I felt my ribs cave in and my internal organs move out of the way. It didn’t hurt. Seriously. It just felt really freaking strange. After waiting a minute to see if I would keel over and die I seemed to be fine, so we finished up the last few minutes of the match. Then class ended, and I went home wondering just what the heck had happened inside of me.

The pain crept in over the course of the rest of the night, and sleeping that evening was hell. I didn’t really sleep actually. I just had a series of short naps. Laying down hurt, and turning over was awfully painful. For the next couple of days it hurt and there was no way that I was going to the next karate class in that condition.

By the time that the next week rolled around I seriously considered going to class. The pain hadn’t gone away completely (and hasn’t), but it was enough that I was thinking that the worse of it was through. I decided against going, however, after trying to play with my dog. I chased him around, but the movement required to reach down and snatch the toy from him was enough to send stabs of pain through my side. Obviously karate is more demanding than playing with your dog, so I didn’t go that evening.

Fast forward a few days. I think of going to karate class this time. My ribs don’t seem to be a real problem at all by this point. I head out and do my “dialy” jogging & walking (I’ve missed a few days or so because of this problem). While I’m walking to my destination I feel something… weird.. inside from my rib. The problem becomes a bit more pronounced when I actually start to jog. It sounds weird, but it’s almost as though the rib is moving a little.

I finish up my jog, go home, and decide that no, a karate class would be a very bad idea at this point.

The next day - yesterday - I go to the hospital and get some X-Rays taken. Some? Correction, several. They took five or six snap shots of my torso. X-Rays were taken from my back, from each side, from the front, and from me facing diagonally both left and right toward the X-Ray machine. With all of the photos that they’ve taken they would be able to develop a 360 degree virtual view of my torso without any problem.

It’s both impressive and slightly disturbing that they took so many X-Rays of me.

Anyhow, now I wait. There’s a statement about our (U.S.) medical system if ever there was one. Something could be seriously wrong with my rib, but hey, go home and wait another couple of days before we take a look at these photos… maybe we’ll let you know Monday.

Oookay then. Right.

So here I sit, waiting.

The pain is generally gone unless I sneeze, or blow my nose, or do something else to forcefully expand my chest. Sneezing kind of sucks to be honest.

All the while I’m going to continue missing classes and falling farther behind. This isn’t a class that you can play “catch up” in by reading a book. I’m beginning to seriously wonder if I’ll be able to pass the test at the end of the semester. On the other hand I’m not about to worsen whatever damage has been done, so I’ll take a failing grade if I have to. Worse case scenario - which I don’t really expect to happen - is the doctor tells me that I can’t go back to the karate class for quite a bit longer.

There are some important lessons learned here, though. I won’t be taking an exact 12 credit hours any more. I can’t drop the karate class because that would taken me below 12 credit hours, which would force me to repay a significant portion of my student financial aid.

What a spiffy situation to be in.

Later folks.

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