Who wants to be a famous M.D.?

Why do I get all the weird problems?

I've been taking a ballet class in Woodland for a few months now. I'm not being unfaithful to Cara at all, I'm still taking all the same classes in Davis as before, I'm just using this to supplement them. It's good to have different teachers, to get different perspectives, to hear things from different people. For example, I'm not a turner at all. My pirouettes have never been anything to write home about. I can do pretty good, clean singles. But anything more than a single turn always turns into a farce. Cara always gives me the same correction: that I need to "use my shoulders", which never made any sense to me. But at my 2nd Woodland class, the (substitute) teacher gave me the exact same correction, and for some reason it actually clicked that time. I can pirouette now! (At least, sometimes. Which is better than before!)

But aside from a few useful corrections, I think the Woodland class is actually harmful to me. It always makes me hurt in very weird ways. Mostly I think this is because I'm old, much as I hate to admit it. The barre exercises are little more than cursory. They're very short, and we don't repeat them. Cara always gives us brutally long barres where everything is done over and over again. I hate it. But I find that I need all those awful grande plies and ronde du jambs and extensions. Without them, my hips never get warmed up. The other thing about the Woodland barres is that they aren't planned out beforehand (teacher's got a day job). Which means that there are long gaps in between each exercise, allowing your muscles to cool down. This seems to be fine for the 12 year olds in the class. I think they like the opportunity to chat, but I'm twice their age, and I really feel it!

My current bizarre malady is that my side hurts. Probably from the core work (crunches and variations on them), though it hasn't happened before. The weirdest part is that it hurts the most when I pee. Who ever heard of your side hurting while peeing? Freaky. Maybe obliques are involved in peeing? Who knew?!

I have other weird problems too. The most pernicious is that sometimes my finger will randomly fall asleep during ballet. It's always the same finger too: the ring finger on my right hand. Although once, only once, and at the Woodland class, no less, it was the baby finger (also on the right). Strange strange strange.

So if you're a M.D. (or on your way to becoming one; unless you're Milton), and want to make a name for yourself. Please, study me, fix me, and write a sensational article about my case for some leading medical journal. I welcome you to exploit me as much as you want! All in the name of science! And also in the name of waking up my finger and relieving my side from its pee-pain.