P.T. Or Not P.T., That Is No Longer The Question... I'm Done!

Today was my last regular physical therapy session at TIRR Kirby Glen. I am, at long last, done, after about seven months of combined home health and outpatient physical therapy. Everything I said in January is still true in July, and I expect it to continue, renewed and probably intensified, as Stella embarks on a course of physical therapy of her own.

There's always a lot to learn, and sometimes there are things one cannot learn at home, or alone. I feel as if I have completed a semester of harpsichord lessons from a professor at a school of music... and now have seven or nine semesters more in front of me before I can claim anything like mastery of the instrument. When the instrument is your body, the motivation is very strong, but the learning is not necessarily easier. We progress as fast as we can, and no faster. I'll keep you apprised of our progress.

To be continued...

Doing My Homework

These days I have no job. I do have physical therapy, which is a strange sort of job in which you pay (or your insurance company pays) the provider. One thing doesn't change, though: my PT is effectively my boss. Lately she has begun assigning "overtime," extra exercises that I am to do at home. I admit I need them: two guided sessions a week will not give me strength and balance enough to function in daily life. But two more self-guided sessions a week are enough to exhaust me for real, and that's one reason I'm not posting a lot.

I like my PT, really I do; she's of about the age to be my youngest daughter or oldest granddaughter if I had one. But it isn't always easy trying to keep up with a young-twenties-ish kid, fit and trim to the last ounce and muscle, who takes her job seriously. Please bear with me...

Higgledy Piggledy, Physical Therapy...

It's a promising beginning for a double dactyl, but it will have to wait, because I have too much, um, physical therapy on my plate at the moment.

I haven't forgotten the blogosphere or this blog, but when even the simplest household acts require twice the time and four times the energy, it's a bit overwhelming. E.g., imagine going to the bathroom, on a walker, on only one leg.

Or changing clothes. Or rinsing a dish in the kitchen sink while sitting in a wheelchair. AND having assignments of exercises, some supervised by your P.T., some using fancy equipment but many just as difficult using cut-out sections of colorful balloons, either gripped in your hands or tied in knots around your leg(s) and the chair you're sitting in. Or lifting weights that seem tiny when you read the numbers on them, but not so small on the 10^th, 15^th, 20^th... repetition of some simple exercise.

Or learning to climb the shallowest step from a brick patio to a wooden deck using a walker... when you lack one foot or one leg.

Or walking around a typical American 3-2-2 house on a walker for every. damned. thing. you. need. to. do in the course of a day.

I'm sure jams knows exactly what I mean; he's been through it. I don't doubt others of you have some first-hand experience as well.

Twice this week I've slept 12 hours in a night. The greatest injustice is that Stella can't do the same herself, and goodness knows most of the housework falls on her, including the chores that once were mine. With luck, they will be mine again at the conclusion of this process. But that's weeks or even months away.

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Still, none of us has any real complaint, compared to the many children with disabilities (and their caregivers) who face all these things and more. And my disability, though permanent, can often be remedied to a point of resuming a more-or-less normal life. How many people, including children, have no such prospect? I have no basis for bellyaching.

For an amputee, balance is the key

I suppose the WSJ sees these kids as "lucky duckies" because they receive government benefits including some tax breaks. There's about as much basic human compassion in these members of the 1% as in Republican candidates in the last election. And they wonder why they did so poorly in that election. And I wonder why Democrats cut GOPers any slack at all. I mean, it's not as if the 1% never ends up physically disabled...

If this post has a point, it is that the political IS personal, the more personal for those with greater disabilities, and more personal in the other direction for people with greater advantages.

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I know none of the people in these pictures personally. But I share a bond with all of them. We face a challenge which does not confront people who have no major disability. Every day we face such a challenge... sometimes with good grace, sometimes with unrestrained frustration, but it is always there in front of us. Steering a wheelchair through narrow hallways or balancing on a walker as one transitions from a chair or bed or wheelchair to our primary means of mobility... at least for now... or making it up a single stair (even 2" or 3", even just one), we grin and grit teeth and go for it. It is a game we win every time we arrive on our feet (or foot) without crashing, or return to the table with a dish not shattered on the floor, or just plain make it to the bathroom with no accidents. The victories in this life are small but savored unreservedly by every one of us you see in those pics.

Join us in our fortune, good and ill... it's like nothing the WSJ's self-satisfied "lucky duckies" are likely to experience in their lives. We are alive, when we might so easily not have been... and damn, we know it every single moment. Join us!