Baby Steps

Nobody told me this was going to be easy.

Yes. Yes they did. My physical therapist, in his boundless enthusiasm early in my treatment, before he knew what or whom he was dealing with, told me that soon I wouldn't need him any more, soon I'd be able to get back to my regular exercise routine of walking 3.5 mph and a half-hour on the elliptical trainer, soon I'd be good as new.

What I failed to ask was, "How soon?"

There are good weeks and bad weeks, good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours. As I write this, it's a bad day and a very bad hour. I hardly slept last night, and when I did, I had nightmares, and this stretch of time on a very bad day (from 3:00 to 6:00) is evil. I'm cranky, dopey, sleepy, as well as the rest of the Seven Dwarfs, except for Doc, because if I had Doc, I'd shake him down for better sleep meds. Yet I'm "supposed" to keep doing my exercises, doing my stretches, doing my walking, and somehow, some way, try to remain positive.

It ain't always easy. And a year later, a year I sometimes want to erase from my life, I can't touch my toes or sit cross-legged on the floor. But I tell myself that these skills are overrated. I can, however, reach halfway down my shins. I also had nearly non-existent abdominal muscles when this all started, now you can probably bounce quarters off of me, so I shouldn't complain too much. But there's one stretch that's been driving me buggy.

I used to do yoga. And I wanted to go back to it; Tom said he didn't think there should be any problems as long as I went slowly and slapped an ice pack on anything that I pulled too far. And in my Gumby lessons (I'm scheduled for another one on Tuesday) he added a basic one. I don't know the name; I don't think it's exactly the Child pose, but it's the one where you're on your hands and knees and sit backward until your butt is on your heels. With heat, with ultrasound, with electrical stimulation of the band-tight muscles that run the length of my spine, I've been able to get close. But still, no cigar. At home I try, and try again, and go too far, and slap some ice on it and try again later.

Maybe this seems easy to you. Maybe you're really flexible and can bend every which way. Maybe you're up out of your chair and trying these stretches right now. Maybe you're trying to get you palms flat on the floor.

Well, good for you.

But I'm having a little trouble getting there.

The process has been making me think of my eldest nephew. My brother was the first of us three biological siblings to reproduce. My friends who had children lived too far away for me to become seriously involved in the developmental steps of their children’s' lives. But my older brother, his then wife and his then one son lived just around the corner. His ex-wife’s was the first pregnant belly I touched (I had no idea the package would be so firm). He was the first baby I saw almost immediately after his birth. And, unbelievably at almost 30, the first baby I'd ever diapered. I watched his gigantic brown eyes grow wide at the first sight of the ceiling fan in our living room ("Dat. Dat, dat," he kept repeating.) I watched him roll over. I watched him take to crawling. I watched his attempts to stand. He had his feet and palms on the floor of his Graco playpen, his butt in the air, and he cried, and cried, and cried, because he couldn't stand up like all the other adults.

Kid, I totally relate to what you'd been going through. I cry a lot less, but Christ. It looks so easy when everyone else does it, so why can't I?

But I keep trying.

I’ll let you know when I get there.