My Therapy After Therapy

As those of you who have been reading my blog know, I have been going to physical therapy for the tear in one of my peroneal tendon for about six weeks now. This has been a new experience for me. My only impressions of physical therapy up to this point were based off movies. You know exactly the type of movie I’m talking about. Yes, the one where the guy is hurt in the car accident and is told he is never going to walk again and then through some dramatic physical therapy rehabilitation work he somehow miraculously regains use of his legs.

Now, after having actually done physical therapy myself, I can say it’s not quite as entertaining as it may seem in the movies. In fact, most of the therapy work just makes you feel like an idiot. Yes, all of you who have done physical therapy before are nodding your heads right now in agreement. But for those of you who have not had the physical therapy experience, let me enlighten you.

Physical therapy is meant to strengthen and remobilize your injured area-wherever that may be. In my case, this area is of course my ankle. So, for roughly an hour per session I have to do awkward ankle exercises and stretches while the physical therapists observes. Doesn’t sound too bad to you? Then you really aren’t imagining it correctly. Do you remember those days in junior high gym class where they combined the girls and boys classes and you all did aerobics together? Well, back then, all the boys made complete fools of themselves. Yes boys, you know it’s true. Your clumsy representation of “the running man” was definitely laughable and the fact that you couldn’t even get jumping jacks right was pretty pathetic. Of course, I was much too nice to make fun of all of you back then-so let me do so now. You looked pretty moronic.

Physical therapy is much like those pitiable gym classes, only the teacher is concentrating just on you and all your idiotic moves. There are no other morons to distract them. And to top it off, you are working on the weakest and most uncoordinated part of your body so you make a mess out of simplest of movements. Needless to say, throughout physical therapy you know you look completely ridiculous.

Despite the embarrassment, physical therapy seems to be helping my ankle. I will have to do it for one more month before a definite decision is made by my doctor on the next course of action. Surgery is now looming in my future so I will happily swallow my pride and do my silly looking exercises in hopes that they will decrease my chances of getting sliced open.

On the upside, the physical therapist I have been going to has been very nice, helpful, and great to work with-much nicer than any gym teacher I ever had. I would recommend him to anyone looking for a chance to publicly humiliate themselves through therapy.