A similar thing, I think, could be said of the physical therapy suite in the University Health Service Building. Much like Mann's mountain, the suite has an uncanny ability to turn casual visitors into (student)life-long members.

There is just something so comforting, even addicting, about those stretching tables and medicine balls and custom-fitting orthotics. Rare are the students who, given access to this rehabilitation wonderland (it takes a referral), can keep their visits to a brief, periodic minimum. Once you spend a little time in the physical therapy suite, as I discovered while being treated for a ruptured patella, it is difficult not to spend a lot of time in the physical therapy suite. Days become weeks that become months that become "Should I really be wearing warm-up pants or would a hospital gown be more appropriate?" Pre-class stretching sessions are followed by post-class strengthening sessions. The most severe cases can lead to instead-of-class "stim" sessions, where wonderfully warm bits of electricity massage rebuild your injured area. It is like what being tazed would feel like if being tazed felt really, really good.

Even at my most addicted, I avoided the instead-of-class route. But there were times when I thought to myself, You know, my mind is stimulated enough. But my patella...that could use a few more jolts.

Part of this, of course, had to do with having a legitimate injury which in turn required legitimate treatment. But only a small part. A larger part had to do with the peculiar and powerful charm of the physical therapy suite itself. Maybe it was the smell from all those open Flex-All containers. Maybe it was the allure of receiving something the therapists call "ultra-sound" even though you are not pregnant. But something certainly got me hooked, persuading me with each visit to reduce the time before my next one.

It didn't help that being surrounded by other patients with other ailments starts to plant ideas, or rather injuries, in your head. Seeing the business student next to me rehabilitate her quadricep I began to think, completely without foundation, that I too I felt a little high thigh soreness. Within seconds, I justified that soreness. I must have tweaked it on the day I ruptured my patella, I thought to myself. Better set up another appointment before it gets worse.

From justification it was only a small, hypochondriac jump to exaggeration. This quad thing was not only serious enough to require treatment--it had been that way for awhile, an old college injury, a chronic affliction, something that "always gives me trouble." The fabrication continued. By the end of the week, I, to reinforce and in large part reinvent my ailment, had extended its history to forever. "Oh yeah, it's an old womb injury. Terrible, just terrible. Out of nowhere, I was slide tackled by an umbilical cord."

Fortunately for me, the end of the term was just the Mann-ian thunderclap I needed to come out of my treatment trance. Clean for close to two and a half months now, I don't let myself go anywhere near the place. If I need to ice, I buy frozen peas. Others though, haven't been so lucky. Each day, it seems, I see more and more students head to the suite for their Thera-band fix. A few, I have noticed on my walks through the quad, have even spiraled down to the most powerful and dangerous treatment of all: crutches. If you see one of your friends sporting a pair, it might be time for an intervention.

Do you have a secret love for Death in Venice? Email rg@umich.edu.