Physical Therapy: Part 1

My PT went through several stages. First there was the hospital PT on the rehab unit, who was a sweet
little girl named Morgan. It was like that girl in high school who was super-popular, but was nice to
everyone (she knew MY name, and I was pretty far down on the social spectrum: Like debate geeks
and goths). Morgan was like that, a precious little young fawn, which helped hide her secret “be an
awesomely uniquely qualified horrible sadist” compulsion. I have since learned that a number of people
with this quality go on to become therapists, but I didn’t know that then.

I think it’s particularly physical therapists who are like this, because my speech therapists are
extensions of my REAL therapists (that’s what I call my psychologist, which I’ve had for the past few
years. I considered having her writing to the new therapists to announce that she had been working
with me for 3 years, and to come to her with any questions and she’d get them straightened out I guess
it’s because speech was such a part of my personality, I ended up crying with them, especially in the
beginning. I say “speech was such a part of my personality” like it’s not important to ANYONE ELSE,
what with it being the main means to communicate with the WORLD, and let me tell you the reason I
have for saying such a tone-deaf thing: I have a PhD in Applied Linguistics and have tried to learn 4
languages, plus I’m a super-talky introvert who fills the world with my shards of brilliance. Yeah, I’m
that kind of asshole.

Anyway, my PT. It started with Morgan who I really liked, despite the sadist thing, and once I was

released out into the world, it picked up with Jason who was an outpatient therapist. I came into PT
being a super-earnest student, wanting to be top of my class, and by and by, I came to loathe PT.
Some of it was the exercises Jason gave me for “homework.” but most of it came from my saying “I
can’t do this” and Jason lying and saying “You can! You just did it!” I have a grudging respect for Jason,
because knowing how much it would have made a difference for him to say “Good job!” or a “Look at
you,” he didn’t cave (at all) and continued to--I’m paraphrasing here--say what a worthless muckety-
muck I was and add another really hard exercise to my homework.

Outside of my prescribed exercises, Jason had the provision that I had to walk for 30 minutes. Now,
I bet you could get up right out of your silly old chair and take a walk for 30 minutes at a mind-numbingly
slow pace. I, on the other hand, had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and promised all good deeds
when I could walk to the end of the block (3 houses down). When the “Jesus and good deeds” stuff wore
off, the first time I went around the block, I decided to have a party. Now, because I couldn’t drink, my
celebration was kind of what my kid would do if he just finished a baseball game--a soda and chips
(minus the underarm farting and insisting on "boneless pizza," whatever that is).

I started out with my walker, but quickly graduated to my cane, because I didn’t want to hasten the onset
of old age with green tennis balls. It was a little bit of a disappointment that I couldn’t spin the cane like a
pimp from the 70s, but I managed to rally. My husband has a bum knee, so he couldn’t walk with me,
so I took to walking the neighborhood. I like to think that I was looked on affectionately as “the
neighborhood drunk” because of the way I walked--I looked like I was constantly falling over, and no one
would talk to me if they thought I was hammered.