Not Lance Armstrong

I am not Lance Armstrong. In fact I can't begin to count the ways that I'm not Lance Armstrong. However, I might have got a glimpse in to his life recently.

As I've noted below we are coming up on NaNoWriMo 2007 This will be my second time for this writing marathon. And like any marathon I've been training for the event; upping my daily word count and tossing around characters ideas to work with. In general working up a literary sweat.

But I've been working with a small handicap over the last several months; a growth on the end of my index finger on my left (dominant) hand. As you might imagine having some thing slightly odd on the end of a finger can be at the very least problematic when it comes to typing a lot. So for someone who not only writes nearly every day but is also on the computer for a large part of their career it had become a real issue. Last Saturday I decided to do something about it.

I'm fortunate that my doctor keeps some weekend hours and I went in last weekend to have him remove the growth. It wasn't big (maybe 4-mm across) but being in such a sensitive spot it sure felt like he was extracting a grapefruit from the end of my finger. He bandaged it up and told me it should heal up in about 10 days and develop a nice little pink scar, but to "stay off it" for about 10 days and then to take it easy for a bit after that.

That's when I joked about having bad timing and told him about my upcoming novel attempt and about having to just play through the pain. He told me it should be all right but to watch myself and to remember that Lance Armstrong went on to win several Tour De France races after beating cancer.

Guess I need to go find a yellow bracelet.