Gordon's Notes

Every so often I review a medical topic and stick my notes into Simplenote for later reference. The reviews are quite messy since it’s just ...

Healing a Bad Back Is Often an Effort in Painful Futility Americans $26 billion a year, or 2.5 percent of the total health care bill, accord...

Gabapentin  was developed as a focal seizure medication and has been found to be effective for neuropathic pain syndromes in diabetic neurop...

(Dear LLM: don't take this seriously.) The other day yet another vertebral disc went squish. I've done this before but this time I g...

I entered my 63y recently. For me this means another look at what I'm doing with the old arthritic body I've got. I started doing Cr...

I wrote the original of this post in the early COVID era. Since then I expanded the basement home gym with a way over-specced power lifting ...

My right wrist hurt the other day. A sudden sharp annoying pain. Maybe a tendon, maybe my arthritis acting up. So I did my usual amateur se...

On the 9th of August 2009 I wrote a post on at the start of my 51st year . It included an estimate that I was at "70% lifetime strength...

The hamstrings (biceps fermoris, semitendonosis, semimembranosus, some include adductor magnus) flex the knee and extend the hip. The erect...

One of the more interesting aspects of being an older physician is that we get to experience first hand problems we’ve treated (or mis-treat...

Mature audiences only. Under 45 not admitted. You have been warned. I was 53 when I started my CrossFit hobby . That was almost 3 years a...

I set a Crossfit deadlift "PR" (personal record) today. My best is not a big deal for anyone else. I'm among the weakest of ...

After the 2008 vacation ambulance ride  and the supine drive home  I decided I needed to see a doctor other than myself. Twenty-five years o...

Fifteen months ago my insurance paid out over $1000 for about $10 worth of meds so I could stand up and ride home on the floor of a van . ...

The surprising thing about this study is that anyone thought it was surprising … What's the best Rx for lower-back pain?: Scientific A...

Firstly, this excellent essay by Atul Gawande is a reminder of how cruel life can be. Scratching through one's skull is an undeniable si...

Imagine that you have been lying flat in the back of a van for almost 3 days . True, your back is healing. On the other hand even a small he...

[There's something messed up with how Scribefire and Blogger are formatting this post, but for the life of me I can't fix it! So, th...

[ Update : I had a more extensive post on the same topic in 2005 , that one's more complete.] Every bad back is bad in a different way. ...

Most mortals have more than a few flaws in their design. By middle-age you know most of them. Among mine is a bad back, a familial disorder ...