Success

I’m finishing up my second week in PT now. Two days a week I’m in traction followed by 45 minutes of pool exercises. The traction is marvelous. The pool exercises are somewhat more frustrating.

The first day in the pool I noted that I was the youngest person in the water. I have noted this on each subsequent visit. Last time, the woman beside me was almost 90. Not that I have anything against older people, just, y’know, I’m accustomed to being able to move better than they can.

The pool exercises they have me doing are really simple movements. I took water aerobics for several years in my 20s. I’m used to movin’ in the water. In PT we’re supposed to warm up by walking backward, forward and sideways across the pool for 10 minutes. I started out doing it the way I had in water aerobics. Quickly, with a little bounce to my step, knees up. Higher! Higher knees! OK, that hurt immediately. Note to self that this is not water aerobics anymore.

I asked on that first day, “So, the deal with the pool is that you get a little stronger and then move to land exercises?” “Yes,” I was told.

The Gym, with their variety of land exercise equipment such as mats and elliptical trainers, has become my goal. The SnakeLady shall matriculate in the gym. The pool is a warm-up – not “real” – just a short stopping point before I’m playing with the big boys. I shall succeed. I shall move up in the world. I shall show substantive progress. My paper reports will show that the SnakeLady “got stronger.”

The first time I asked to move to The Gym was at my third visit. “But you said that the last two times you were in the pool you had to take Vicodin when you got home?” “Yes,” I said, nodding blankly. What does that have to do with moving up in the world?

I asked again on my fourth visit. “But didn’t you say last time you were in so much pain you had to lie down for the rest of the evening?” I shrug. They obviously do not understand how important it is to me to Succeed at physical therapy. “And you’re in pain every day still?” “I’m not in as much pain,” I say.

My physical therapy has been renewed for another 4-6 weeks and they’ve still got me in the pool. Indefinitely, apparently. But they did increase the reps of my exercises from 10 to 12. The 90 year old does 15.