Back, Back, to Paris, Paris

(Note: This title works better if you remember that the French pronounce their capital city as “Pa-ree.”)

Matt dropped me off at the train station this morning after a night of review. I caught the 9:57 from Rouen to Paris, and then walked over to the Opera to catch the #8 train to the southwest corner of the city, where I’ll be taking the CFA tomorrow morning. On the way, I had to stop in at an H&M (think Urban Outfitters but significantly more Eurotrash) to pick up a clean t-shirt, as my persistent “just about to move” status over the past two weeks has led to a noticeable dropoff in laundry cleaning.

Upon my arrival at INSEP, I immediately regretted my choice of t-shirt, which happened to be the cheapest one I could find. It was a dirt cheap knockoff of a French national team soccer jersey, with “FRANCE” emblazoned across the blue front and goofy looking red-and-white stripes around the armpits. As I sat in the waiting room, overhearing, if I understood correctly, that one of my neighbors had medalled (silver, I think) in the past Olympics, I realized that I looked like an absolute clown. Here I was in the medical wing of the National French Athletic Institute, the only American on the entire campus, wearing a crappy “FRANCE” t-shirt. It would be sort of like attending the Oscars with a t-shirt that simply said “MOVIES” across the front. What a putz.

In any case, I quickly saw Dr. Demarais, who after a few questions and ten minutes of manipulating my elbow this way and that, determined that it was probably just an inflammation of the ligament. However, in order to make sure, he wanted to send me down for an “IRM,” which is exactly what you think it is. All of our conversations- and we had several of them throughout the afternoon- existed in this weird lingual netherworld between English and French; I started out, as I often do, apologizing for my poor spoken French, he starts in English, I persist in French so as to make an effort, he starts alternating between the two, and we end up in a confusing blend of Franglais.

Given the French reputation for taking their time, I was impressed with the efficiency of the INSEP operation. I was there for about four hours, at least three of them waiting, but they managed to get the screening, enrollment, initial consultation, MRI, and the review of its results all done in one afternoon. He’s prescribed me some misotherapy (sp?), which my web research indicates is some variation of physical therapy involving minor injections below the surface of the skin, and not merely dipping one’s wounded elbow in the tofu soup junk you get with sushi. Ba dum bum. The good news is twofold: First, no Thomas Juan for me. Second, he thinks that with an aggressive program, I could be good as new within 2-4 weeks, which is excellent news indeed. That would let me get some work in before resting my arm for the end-of-season tournament, which I’ll be discussing sometime over the next few weeks.

Now to get back to studying…