Feeling Like a Geezer

Help!!!  Will my legs ever get back to normal?

It has been two difficult weeks since my heel surgery, and I am glad those days are now behind me.   Now it's time for the next set of terrors to commence:  physical therapy.

At my follow up appointment the doc said "You're healing nicely," and "everything looks good so far," so what do I do?  Yesterday I went and flipped up over the front handle bars of my knee scooter and took a nasty tumble, catching and twisting the ankle of my recovering heel.

Thinking back on the mechanics of my fall, I think a bit of my background in Judo helped me from losing teeth or breaking my nose in a face plant.  I seem to recall instinctively tucking my head and rolling out over my shoulder.  Although I got banged up and twisted my bad ankle, really I did OK - nothing worse than what a couple of Advil can handle.

So today, then, I went in for my first physical therapy appointment.

A couple of impressions from my session:

1.  That is one scary place.  Obviously they hurt you in there, because every other patient I saw was being treated with ice bags.

2.  I need to be more vigilant about removing the lint from between my toes and shaving my legs.  My bare foot and ankle were within six inches of my therapist's eyes numerous times throughout the session.

3.  I like my jazzy, able-to-go-fast-and-sometimes-off-roading knee scooter, and I do not want to graduate to a walker.  How will I carry my stuff?

4.  I refuse to succumb to the peer pressure of putting tennis balls and a bingo bag on my walker.

5.  There are no windows in the facility.  If I feel as though I were being tortured in there, it would be my word against theirs.

6.  On my paperwork, there were only 1 1/2 blank lines on which I was to describe the current ailment for which I am being treated, yet three entire pages full of questions about all my other health history.  Why do they need to know if my husband had a vasectomy?

7.  They need some updated, decent magazines.  I did not care for the Pregnancy and Childbirth magazine I was given to read during my icing session.  Had four kids.  Had a hysterectomy.  Been there.  Done with that.

8.  Unbelievably, I still have 44 more sessions in my prescription.  Oh goody.

9.  I think that getting down and out of the house, into and out of the car, and into and out of the therapy building should count as one hour of therapy.  Oh, and throw into that a trip to an unfamiliar bathroom.  Yeah, definitely one small workout.

10. My therapist, Bill, was pleasant and encouraging.  However, he did warn me that some other guy named Rick might work with me on occasion.  Stressing about the unknown is one of my specialties.

Other than that, it went fairly well.

Only 72 hours and 490 exercise reps until my next appointment.

Let the fun begin.