Diane Hoover BechtlerBROKEN PEOPLE: Part 2 — Physical TherapyThe physical therapy area has much equipment but it is not like a gym. For me it is my gym. Make no mistake. This is not Jack Lalane. The women here do not wear sexy workout clothes. We are in comfortable attire. Ron has been scurried to the back. I am taken back at about the same time. I watch as they loose the Velcro straps that have been holding Ron's hands and arms in place. He is moved to a table, where two people began stretching his limbs. I don't know what happened to Ron. I don't ask, just as no one has asked me. In rehab, we all encapsulate ourselves into clear bubbles of privacy. We can see and be seen but no one gets in without an invitation. Once I am in the back, things are quieter. The children go to a different area. The physical therapy area is neither for sports nor preparation for sports. Far from it; this is where people fight to get some of their old movement back. We celebrate every step every person takes. Kimberly asks me where my arm brace is. I tell her I left it at home, because I only have one hand, and I cannot carry all these things. She chirps, "Why don't you wear it? " Women named Kimberly are allowed to chirp. I say, "What an idea? Wear it? " Busted. That's what I was thinking and noncompliant. I've been called noncompliant before. She wraps my hand around a pole with an Ace bandage. This is not as barbaric as it sounds. I have tone and not in a good way. This kind of tone causes muscles to contract, especially in my hand and my foot. If she doesn't wrap my hand around the bar, my hand will slip away from the bar. She tells me to lift the bar 10 times for three sets and to keep my elbows straight. The tone kicks in, almost immediately causing me to alternately grip the bar, tightly or to try to pull my hand away. Because I am strapped to the bar, I can do neither. I lift and lift until my arm muscles ache, especially my triceps. The muscle is very tight. This is part of my neurological disease-overly tight muscles. I must stretch constantly just to keep them usable or contracture can pull them…so tight that they become unusable. My arm would begin to look like a bird wing-my hand with pull to my body them causing my elbow to jut like a wing. Then I'd never get it pulled out again. Because my left tricep is tight I fear the therapists will suspect I am not doing my stretches at home, which is, of course, true. They are boring. I do them, but not as much as I am told. First thing when you get out, "stretch for half an hour, then in the evening stretch for a half an hour again. " In between do your aerobic exercises for a half an hour to 45 minutes. I pedal my exercise bike for a half hour each day and I stretch for a half hour each day and that is enough. Once in a while I do extra walking or fine motor skill work of placing pegs in a board. Invariably, the pegs frustrate me as my left arm waves wildly in the air struggling toward a peg only to clasp the edge and dump out the entire box. When I finally grasp a peg I repeat the process, taking the peg to the board then struggling to make the contact of placing the peg in the whole. Getting one peg in one hole can take 20 minutes of sheer frustration. In this round of physical therapy, I have seen new devices. I saw a woman in a standing frame. I had seen photographs before but I have never seen an actual person in one. The woman was sandwiched between two grids of steel or aluminum and was lifted pneumatically to a standing position. Albert walks on the treadmill by way of a sling/harness. It looks somewhat like a large diaper or lederhosen. The lederhosen wrapped under the groin and go up the sides like shorts. The top is an elaborate tank shirt with a ring hooks. A therapist clips into the hooks. Then Albert is more or less winched into place. The therapist winds the machine pulling Albert ever upward until his feet are above the treadmill. The therapist lowers him until his feet are in contact with the treadmill. That is the sweet spot. I note that Albert is wearing two leg braces. He moves along the treadmill in this manner for 20 minutes. The prevailing thought is that his brain is being retrained. In making up right contact with a surface, his brain will begin to remember walking. As he improves the therapist will lower him putting more weight on his legs causing them to step more normally. I have seen Albert for the six weeks that I've been here. He seems no lower than the first day. I'm sure I am wrong because these things happen in millimeters and in milliseconds as opposed to our previous ways of being. One woman comes in daily. As with almost everyone, I have no idea what her physical problem is. I watch her transfer from her power scooter to a standing machine. It is a hell of a struggle. I see the sweat on her forehead. After she makes the move from her scooter to the machine she presses some buttons and the thing rises. She is in an upright position stabilized by a solid back and a bar at her front her exercise is to stand there. Day after day I see her stand stabilized for half an hour or more. Another regular grasps a 2-pound weight and lift it over her head as many times as she can which is not many. Over my weeks I watch her increase the number of lifts. She progresses from three to 12 in the period of time I knew her. I can now hobble with my cane around the entire circumference of the physical therapy room. Harold tells me it's 600 feet. I am happy to have progressed to that point. I also stand easier now. I don't have to push off with my good hand. I simply stand. At night I go home with my homework and moved my leg as many times as I can to strengthen it, to loosen stiff joints, and to remind the leg what it is supposed to do. I am cheerleader to everyone there. I am grateful to our leaders, our physical therapists, and our occupational therapists. I wish we all had medals. We deserve them. We deserve them for getting out of bed each day rather than just lying there, which would be easy. I put on my pretend medal and wear it after I have made it around the gym circumference of 600 feet. Never has so little felt so good. A woman walks across the floor wearing a modest swimsuit. I am in stretch pants and a T-shirt. They are functional and easy. This is not a gym where women go around wearing thong exercise tights. As I say every time I leave the house, this ain't no beauty contest. The woman in the swimsuit is on her way to the heated pool where she will be placed in a sling and moved across the pool and lowered into the shallow end. Everyone here loves water. They regale its power to unweight the body. This allows more freedom of movement than is possible out of water. I have not yet been in the water although I had said I will give it a try. I'll try anything. We have a pool at our condo complex. Although, this is not a gym, it is our version of one. We are the broken people. In our gym we do not wait for someone to heft 300 pounds over their head. We cheer when one of our own takes a step alone. We understand the effort that went into the step. We are not tan and buff. We are not sculpted. We are pale and wan from months of lying in hospital beds healing. It is a huge accomplishment that we are here at all. Most of us should be dead. Instead, we go to whatever lengths it takes to get to physical therapy and hang from walking hoists or swimming in demure swimsuits. In fact we do not swim, we float. In the water I can lift my arm easily. Outside the water is another story. Warren can walk in the water. On regular ground he requires a walker. In the water he becomes all most normal. In the water I become almost normal. No one wants to join the club of broken people. I broke. In looking back, I know that I broke very slowly. Chips of me can be found in California, the North Carolina mountains, the South Carolina beaches, all over Switzerland, in other various parts of Europe, in the Atlantic Ocean in the Pacific ocean, in the Mediterranean, in the Adriatic. The big breaks happened in America. I don't think anything could have stopped it. In physical therapy, I along with others try to reassemble ourselves. No matter how hard I try I cannot find all the pieces. I will find one and drop another in the process. I may drop it in Kansas. I may drop it in New York. I may leave it in an airplane. Some of the smaller pieces are on the physical therapy floor. Big chunks are in Rochester, Minnesota. I wonder where the other people's pieces might be. Just as I do not know the names of their diseases or circumstances, I do not know the locations all their broken parts. In the end, I must search for my broken parts only. If I find one and can glue it I will. But mostly disability is a matter of learning to do things in a different ways. The second part is making peace with the things that cannot be fixed, binding those parts that are broken with an Ace bandage. Hoping for some kind of healing whether by physical therapy, medical treatment, or grace.
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