Eight minutes of your life to save someone else's.

A friend of mine has leukemia and she needs a bone marrow transplant.

At this time, she does not have a donor match.

PLEASE consider registering to become a bone marrow donor at www.BeTheMatch.Org.

Seriously, it could not be easier. You go to their website and sign up. This will take about 5 minutes. Then a few days later, you get a kit in the mail and you swab the inside of your cheeks a few times, stick some labels on things and put the envelope back in the mail. You don't even pay postage.

Many people have been on the registry for years and have never been called. If you are lucky enough to be a match for someone, you will either have a non-surgical procedure or an outpatient surgical procedure to extract marrow. The latter, the outpatient surgical procedure, will leave the donor with a sore back for a few days. But while you are recovering, someone else is getting the marrow they need to save their life.

So. Check it out. If you are 18 to 60 and in reasonable health, you should be good to go.

Wait, my body is trying to tell me something.

And today, two days after my hip went I GIVE UP GOD DAMN IT YOU AREN'T LISTENING TO ME, I am truly listening.

Here is what happened.

I dance. A lot. Which I love in the same way I love George Clooney. Which is a lot. And while it is not a professional situation, my dance class, I take it very seriously and act as though I may be called to dance, say, in New York at any minute.

Believe it or not, this is not the problem. My problem is not my love or my dedication to my avocation. The problem is that I knew my body was getting more and more out of alignment and that would ultimately lead to injury if I didn't re-educate my neuro-muscular system. I need not remind you that I OWN Pilates studios, right? And that I can do Pilates at any second and/or every second, right?

For the last month, my body was telling me during every step I took what was wrong with my alignment. My foot told me and my hips told me and my back told me. The fact that I kept "falling" off my lowest sandals told me. But I kept on jumping and wiggling and twisting and kicking. And Monday night, my hip said "that's it, knuckle head, I'm out." Literally. My left hip slipped around in the socket, stretching and pinching and messing with all the tissue in that joint area. It did so because I was over working my "turn out" muscles, plus working with my pelvis out of line so that a good old hip jut to the left created an unstable sheer and voila - I was on the floor and unable to weight bear.

Here is the EXCELLENT news about all of this.

1. I am listening now.

2. I learned even more about alignment pitfalls and can now share an even keener eye with clients and students at Pendleton Pilates.

3. I learned some awesome things about what to do if you are injured. First of all, I had the lucky fortune to have someone who knew a bit about pressure point releases relative to my hip area. So she (aka Julie Sunderland) did some poking at my ribs and my knee and my foot and that kept the rest of the muscles from freaking out more than was needed post-injury.

I also learned that Jodie Linver and her team at the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine are even more brilliant than I thought! I went out on Tuesday, still having a hard time bearing weight on the hip. Jodie and another doc, a chiropractor, checked me out and figured out that I had stressed out the tissues, tendons, ligaments that stabilize the joint. So they got Cindy to come and hook me up to this device that sends electromagnetic current directly to the tissue that needs healing.

After a half hour of this, I rested, put ice on it, drank about 6 gallons of water, and went to bed.

When I got up (less that 36 hours after injury), I could walk on it without a limp. MIRACLE!

So. I need to move slow then rehab a couple weeks at Pilates and keep it up as I move back into dance and other more rigorous activities.

Mainly, I need to listen carefully to my smart and talkative body.