Monday, March 02, 2009

Medical & Tennis

Well I went to the clinic today to get my stitches taken out and get the results of the biopsy. Turns out everything is okay, it was a non-malignant nevus. Hooray! I now have a small scar above my left eyebrow but that's okay, better safe than sorry. Overall that was a quick and painless experience. It is good to get the stitches out though. Because the stiches were just above my eyebrow everyone whose saw it thought at first I had been in a fight. One Arab guy even asked if I was married because he wondered if my wife had hit me! (Maybe things like that happen all the time in this part of the world??)


I've now started playing tennis again after almost 3 years. I used to play all the time in Bermuda, sometimes up to three times a week, but I arrived in Doha in May so it was too hot to play tennis here. I played squash instead, messed my elbow up, didn't play any racket sports for months, then it got hot again, then I got repetitive strain injury, then my knees, etc etc. So now a small group of us are playing every Saturday afternoon and my knees don't seem to mind.

But wow -- does my technique ever suck now.

That first time playing I literally could not sustain a rally, or even get most of my returns in the court. Didn't get a single first serve in, and probably missed about half of my second serves. If all the people I used to play tennis with in Bermuda could have seen me play they would have been horrified. Thankfully when I played again this past weekend I started getting my groove and things greatly improved from the previous week. Still nowhere near the level I was at back in Bermuda but I was just grateful for just the quick improvement. At least now I won't be embarrassed to play tennis. Which is good because I always enjoyed playing, it is my favourite sport and probably the only one I am reasonable at.

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