Physical therapy … The final frontier. These are the voyages of a man’s punctured thigh as it explores strange new sensations and grueling trips on the stationary bike
Oh, and don’t forget electro-shock therapy! Shoot, this is a science fiction movie waiting to happen.
After six long weeks, physical therapy means I can walk, I’m almost healed and I can all-but put this long saga to bed. Unfortunately, I’m still left with a rather nasty scar from a surfboard fin that smiles at me and snickers. (It is great for show-and-tell, though.)
I’ve been seeing a physical therapist I know, Joe Webb, and I figured since we were friends he would cut me some slack, throw me some bones and write me get-out-of-work notes so I could play hookie. I think my first words to him were, “Just show me some stretches I can do with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other.” I think his first words to me were, “Come on back to my torture chamber.”
I should have run right then, but well I couldn’t. They would have hog-tied me and carried me in.
Joe’s idea of physical therapy is grossly different than mine. Mine is a bit closer to say a spa, laying out at the beach or getting a massage. That, in my mind, is pretty darn therapeutic. What leg wouldn’t bounce right back from that?
His idea of physical therapy tends to be a bit more traditional and grounded in medical science. To hear Joe tell it, muscles that haven’t been used for six weeks tend to shrink and waste away. They must be rehabilitated, especially if you want to run on them again.
Also according to Joe, they sometimes need a little encouragement and motivation to spark back to life. Enter onto the scene electricity.
See, the surfboard fin more or less chopped one of my thigh muscles in half, and some of the nerves needed a little boost to get it working again. So a device with a 9-volt battery was connected to my muscle to send it electric pulses that, in the gentlest way, told it to hop to it or else it would fry like a chicken wing. I don’t know that I’m using the technical terminology, but it’s how I like to explain it.
And since I’m no dummy, and neither are my muscles, we saluted and got to work. Joe had something that looked a little too much like an electric chair, and I sure didn’t want to graduate up to that.
I’ve learned a few rules of physical therapy since I began there. First, and foremost, if something looks or sounds ridiculously easy, expect it to hurt like someone ignited gasoline inside your leg. After biking, lifting some weights and standing on a jelly-like ball to do squats, Joe told me to sit on a rolling stool and drag myself around using my heals to pull me.
“Oh man,” I told him. “I thought you were going to give me something hard. Shoot, I ran a marathon last October! I’ll just use one heal.”
He smiled. About two minutes later my hamstrings literally burst into flames and ran out of the room screaming for a fire extinguisher. Joe thought this was pretty funny.
I heard him tell a patient to do “dead bug” and I can only imagine how hard that one was.
Another good rule is whenever asked how you’re feeling, lie. Never, EVER, say anything like, “Great!” or “best I’ve felt in weeks, maybe months.” This just signals to a physical therapist that they need to turn it up a notch and really challenge you. Now when asked I say my muscle turned to dust, a disc popped out of my spine and that due to liver bypass surgery, I need to take it easy.
And a final rule: Never write about your therapist until you’re totally sure you’re done with therapy. You never want to accidentally insult a guy who hooks batteries up to your leg. So between writing this column and when it finally runs, I’m fully expecting my days of physical therapy will be over.
If not, hopefully Joe’s 9-volt battery is running out of juice and the wheel fell off his rolling stool.