“If man was meant to fly, he’d have wings!”
Yes, and if he was meant to walk upright on two legs, he’d have a better….
Monkey see……..
In evolutionary terms, Homo sapiens really haven’t been at this upright-walking thing for very long, yet here we are walking, jogging, and running about on two legs like we were made for it. We weren’t. An anatomy designed for trotting about on all fours has been put to the task with satisfactory effect, but there are serious anatomical compromises involved in the act of spending most of our time ambulating about on two legs. I know this first hand. And someone needs to warn our closest cousins, because they are heading for certain trouble.
….. Monkey do!!
If one cares to be in the know about such things, one could find reference to a fairly large number of individuals from simian and great ape species who habitually walk about in bipedal fashion. Some of these individuals are fairly notorious amongst zoologist types for their peculiar penchant for upright ambulation. There is one great ape, a chimp whose actual name escapes me (let me call him “Bo Bo”), that was really fond of walking about on two legs. Seeing video of this guy cruising around upright is actually kinda creepy. Still, I couldn’t be happier for Bo Bo, showing off for all the other chimps with his creepy, upright, missing-link two-legged walking act, but what Bo Bo doesn’t know is that his belly, not his legs, is the weakest link in his homonid ambulation aspirations. Bo Bo can walk around on two legs, as can we humans, but neither he nor we are really built for it.
Four years ago, whilst removing a particularly stout and completely debilitated Homo sapiens britannicus from a helicopter, said individual fell onto me full force driving me backwards out of the helicopter and down to the ground four feet below. As this man was already grievously injured, I endeavoured to keep him from an abrupt and traumatic engagement with terra firma. Landing first on both feet then falling flat on my back, I managed to keep the stretcher onto which this guy was securely fastened from hitting the ground. As others immediately came to relieve me of my burden (big guy, full combat gear, vitals monitor, IV set-up, etc.) from my out stretched arms, I rolled to one side and stood to dust myself off. And that’s when it hit me, my intrinsic design flaw.
As the shock load of about three hundred pounds befell me and I strained with all my might to resist it, I felt a tearing sensation in my abdomen. And sure enough, within hours I observed the tell-tale signs of torn fibers in my right lower abdomen.
Who signed off on this?
And here is where my design flaw, really more of a design compromise, comes into play. If we were stomping about on all fours, like a gorilla, the majority of the weight of our internal organs would be born by our wonderfully protective rib cage. But we don’t walk on all fours, we walk around upright on two legs like a bunch of smarty pants, leaving our soft-tissue lower abdominal muscles to keep all our guts inside. To further complicate matters in men, our spermatic ducts take a ridiculously convoluted path north from our testes traveling superficially just under the surface for some distance before truly entering into the abdomen so that this duct can ultimately connect with the business end of the penis. At this point of entry into the body, the spermatic duct passes through muscle, and not just one layer of thick, simple muscle but through the juncture where several different muscles meet and ultimately make attachment to the pelvis. Brilliant design. I hope you’re reading this, Bo Bo.
This is your abdominal muscle on a bad day….
This hole in the abdomen, the inguinal ring, is something of an accident just waiting for an excuse to happen. Like, for instance, a big guy and a ton of gear falling out of a helicopter onto you. Really, didn’t Darwin see this coming? Well obviously the vast majority of men go their entire lives without a problem in this area, but given a large enough shock load, pretty much any guy is going to experience a tear (me included and I can rip off 100 situps in two minutes time). The muscle fibers run parallel and have great longitudinal strength, so what actually happens is a fairly weak bond, fiber strand to fiber strand, is pulled apart laterally. Kind of like string cheese. Yummy.
The string cheese on my right side separated pretty traumatically, and so I had that fixed when I got back home almost a year after the event. The string cheese on my left side really put in a gallant effort and I thought I would escape a bilateral repair, but once the integrity of the bond here was also compromised, it just continued to tear more and more over time. And so here I am, status post left inguinal herniorrapphy, laid up with a fresh surgical incision. The peri-operative fentanyl wore off hours ago and now my left side is really singing to me off-key backwards in German and I can’t even go enjoy a Guinness to help shut it up because my liver doesn’t like processing ETOH and APAP at the same time. What a drag.
Go ahead, blame it on THESE guys. You know you wanna!
To make matters worse, “six weeks no heavy lifting”. No running, nor rowing, nor climbing. No hiking, nor biking, nor …. anything fun! Reminds me of “Cat in the Hat”. “All we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit. And we did not like it, not one little bit.” Well maybe I will just take it easy, enjoy some green eggs and ham, catch up on some reading, type some more rants, do some research on a few things. But I will definitely NOT be sitting for six weeks. I was cautiously up and about in about one week last time as I recall, and really, it’s a matter of using your head to judiciously stay active while still letting your body heal. There are no “one size fits all” parameters. I imagine I will be doing some, if not all, of those action verbs well before my six weeks is out, because I am just really cool like that.
Sorry, but I’m gonna hafta put you down…..
But, alas! My recliner beckons. Time now to let the healing begin, and for that I need nutrient dense foods: vitamins, minerals, lipids and protein….perhaps some cheese is in order. Just not string cheese. No. No string cheese. Anything but freakin’ string cheese.
