Twistin’ By The Pool

I’m on guard against getting my hopes up where it regards something that might help my physical condition. After all, I’ve been burned so many times before. The meds that failed, the “miracle cure” that didn’t work, the doctors that came so well recommended. I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown running at Lucy’s football. Or, like any child raised on Saturday morning cartoons in the ‘60s, like a certain coyote awaiting his most recent order from the Acme Corporation.

It’s the very definition of insanity, you know. To keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

But this time, I might be on to something. And it’s the simplest damned thing in the world. I get into a tank of hot water, and with the help of a physical therapist, I exercise and stretch my way back to a somewhat normal level of flexibility.

It’s as old as the Roman baths; yet it’s one of the last things I’ve gotten around to trying. All the magic bullet pills, all the new-fangled steroid injections, and still, I’ll be doing the same thing as Nero when he got achy after too much fiddling around.

I had my pre-therapy evaluation yesterday. Got bent like the usual pretzel, filled in the usual forms. Signed the usual places that protect my privacy yet allow Homeland Security access to my information in the event of a national emergency. Though why the President would need to know my range of motion or injury history during an anthrax attack escapes my understanding, unless it would used to screen out people who can’t run away very fast.

But Christ, I thought to myself as I filled out the Medical History form and reached the all-too-small space where I was supposed to indicate what treatments I’ve tried to date for my condition. Can we talk about the ten kinds of breathing techniques? The guided imagery CDs? The physical therapist’s double-jointed spine table? The giant needles full of cortisone jabbed into my back? The unreimbursable bucks I’ve spent on massage and supplements and acupuncture? Honey, you don’t have enough paper behind that desk for me to detail everything I’ve tried.

And it all could have been as simple as the fact that man comes from seawater. Albeit this water will be chemically-treated and bobbing about with four other women who will also be stretching their tired hamstrings and stiff ilio-tibial bands, but still.

Seawater.

Then the stardust clears from my eyes as William, my new underwater guide, gives me the tour. (I now have a therapist on land, and in water. Next I imagine I’ll find one who works at zero G. Don’t laugh. I’m sure there are some exercise physiologists at NASA researching this as you read this.) Anyway, I get a good hard look at this pool. The stainless steel and tile sparkle as the water undulates from some unseen source.

There are no stairs. I was told there would be stairs.

My stomach tightens. “Uh. William?”

“Yes?” he says.

“How am I supposed to get into this thing?”

He looks at me like I have three heads. “Well. You sit on the side,” (the edges are raised, at a height just above my knees) “And then you swing your legs over the edge.”

It’s the swinging my legs over the edge part that I’m having trouble with. I want to tell him, “Dude. If I could do that, then I wouldn’t need physical therapy.”

Seeing my concern, he points to The Chair. You’ve probably seen these. The hydraulic lifts they have at public pools to get the truly disabled or wheelchair-bound people into the water.

I’d failed to notice it before. And I glare at it. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s going to be a frosty day in the netherworld before I have to be lowered into the pool in that thing.

I can do this.

Maybe.

But I’m not going to think about that now. I don’t have to. There are other things I have to think about first.

It starts with finding a bathing suit. My old one fit me…oh, when I was a couple of sizes smaller. But where does one find a disposable (read: cheap) bathing suit in November by Tuesday?

Hey, if I can do that, getting into the pool is going to be a snap. If man came from the sea, then surely he can, when needed, crawl back in.