The Infamous Osgood Schlatter, and Kristen Brydums

From all the running -- four times a week for an hour and a half on two different basketball teams -- Maya has developed chronic pain in her knees. Achy pain, sharp pain, pain that goes from one knee to the other. When she was a toddler until she was about eight, anytime she went through a growth spurt, her feet would ache so badly she'd wake me up to rub them a couple times a night. But the knees worry us. I really believed it was nothing more than growing pains and a little tendinitis, but Husband is hypersensitive about the matter considering he's had ACL and meniscous surgeries. "She's too young to have knee problems." I took her to the doctor on Monday as a precaution and it turns out she has a condition called Osgood-Schlatter disease. Husband would later remark, "After the famous Osgood Schlatter?" It's a condition that affects active young athletes -- "mainly boys" the doctor said -- where kids experience pain at the base of their knee cap from the growth plates rubbing against the top of the tibia. Ouch. Extreme running and growth spurts flare it up and cause pain. Maya said, "Don't tell me I have to stop playing basketball." The doctor said no, but she has to cut down. Maya sort of fish flopped on the examination table. This was not the news she wanted to hear, but all of her parents, me, Husband, BD and Sanne were thrilled she didn't have any tears in ligaments or anything else more serious or permanent. Osgood-Schlatter will go away when she stops growing. Beat it, Osgood. The doctor gave us a note to discontinue one basketball team, but she can stay with the other. On the way out of the office I said to Maya, "Dude, you have a disease." We laughed and went home to ice her knees with a frozen pack of peas. Here's Mina my other little stud working on her tennis game with her awesome coach Amy. 

I recently read an article about Kristen Brydums. Kristen was a student from San Francisco who went on a utopian journey across the U.S. out to prove the generosity of people. She was an ultimate freegan; she gratefully took what people gave her and then gave it all away again. The purpose of this journey was to prove that this recycling of generosity works. When she reached New Orleans, she hung out with dumpster-diving artists in abandoned houses in the 9th Ward and on her second night there she was shot in the face four times and killed, her borrowed bike stolen, her purse taken too. Her mother laments that Kristen would have gladly given the stuff to the people who did this to her. Having looked her up again, I read a few blogs ripping Kristen's naivete and how this has re-kicked up a political shit storm regarding sections of a still battered New Orleans. Yet still I am deeply touched by Kristen's belief that scarcity is a myth; that there is plenty for everyone if we -- individuals and government -- shared a little more. And with that -- as people oddly and angrily battle over what she was or wasn't, and what NOLA is or isn't -- she inspired me. Her open heart and big naive ideas are not lost on me nor do I think they were squashed in vain.