“Pain and torture! Pain and torture!”
“Oooo. Good luck with that.”
I don’t know what those people were talking about. And I hope the physical therapist never finds this.
So on the way home from a visit with the ortho last week I realized that I was driving right by the rehab place. We set up a week’s worth of appointments. They checked my insurance, I filled out paperwork and I started today.
Up first was the meeting with the main therapist. He looked at the papers, asked some of the same questions, moved my arm around and had me turn and move my neck here and there and everywhere. He then handed me off to one of his colleagues. She would be the one to put me through my paces.
We started with six minutes on the hand bike, three minutes forward and three minutes back, just to stretch. This, of course, is the sort of circular thought that appeals to me. Oddly enough, because I’m turning my shoulders, my form is worse on a hand bike than it is on a bicycle. Rock, rock, rock.
Then there were resistance bands. Pin the elbow to the ribs and pull against the band, both across the body and then, turning around, through the body. “Two sets of 20,” she said. Naturally I did more.
Then there was a bit of neck resistance. There’s a curved aluminum bar that comes from the wall and has a foam pad on the other end which is designed to make you feel as silly as possible. Twenty nods forward, turn around, 20 nods back.
And then, perhaps my favorite part, were the bicep curls. I’m working on the one-pounders. (I’m not supposed to hold anything heavier than a drink in a glass, after all.) Two sets of 20, forward, to the side and to the back; naturally I did more. I don’t know why. No one is proving anything with a one pound barbell. But it is a gym setting, and 20 always feels like a low number of reps … so I usually do 30 or 40 of whatever it is.
Resistance curls on the nautilus equipment, rowing on another. There was stretching in a giant cage that looked like a defensive end’s facemask. Finally there was more resistance stretching of the arm on a rope and pulley system.
None of this is exciting. All of it has a purpose. Most of it feels silly. But that’s OK, I’m getting better! That’s what counts!
Oh, wait, here’s the massage table and — the lead therapist has fingers the size of medicine bottles and they are as solid as the head of a hammer. He puts these things into my shoulder blade, and into and over the incision. The sensation hasn’t entirely come back to that area, but you can feel this. He gets just past that hurts-so-good massage feeling and flirts with the “Would you please stop? I’m about to cause a scene” level. He is brilliant. This is to break up the scar tissue, among other things, and is admittedly painful now, but helpful later.
Maybe this is what everyone was talking about.
He wore out my shoulder blade. I’d told him about the feeling that I was about to spasm across my back (the muscles connect, so this makes sense) and he spent a lot of time just pummeling my shoulder.
And then he hooked me up to electricity for 10 minutes, as high as I could tolerate it. The current stimulates muscle contraction and blood flow. Feels like ants crawling on your arm, and was more mild than any time I’ve ever managed to grab a hot wire.
I was more interested in his ice pack. I’m afraid I’ve developed something of a habit with the stuff. We live about six minutes from the rehabilitation place. I put on more ice when I got home.
