Making It Worse To Get Better.
Twenty three of so years ago I was sleeping on a cheap futon every night. My then-wife and I didn't have much money at the time, and the furniture we had was less than impressive.
As a result of sleeping on that futon, the muscles in my right arm grew so they pinched off a nerve cluster in my shoulder. Every once in a while, a searing pain would shoot through my shoulder. This was especially fun when I was driving 70MPH on the highway. It was debilitating every time it occurred, and kinda scary for a young kid who had up until that point been more or less invincible. Even an exploding appendix hadn't dropped me. This was before years of chronic back pain and other accumulated ailments taught me my own mortality.
I went to the doctor, who gave me a bunch of 1000mg Motrin horse pills and sent me to physical therapy. Not knowing any better, I went.
When I got there, I was assigned to the only guy at the clinic with less medical experience than I had. He started sticking electrodes on my arm, explaining they would stimulate the muscles and re-train them to not pinch that nerve cluster anymore. Sounded good to me.
"Let's see. We'll stick one there and one there and another one there and..." Eventually he felt like he had coated my shoulder well enough, but looked confused when he had one left over. With a shrug, he threw it on a bare piece of skin, flipped a switch on the box, and walked away.
Initially it was interesting watching the individual muscles flex and relax. After five or ten minutes, my forehead broke out into a cold sweat and I started to feel nauseous. Not seeing the guy who was supposed to be tending to me, I tried to get the attention of someone. Anyone. They all magically were otherwise occupied and failed to notice me, and like a proper low-ranking troop I didn't want to rock the boat. It wasn't until the clinic's Chief looked across the room and noticed I was white as a sheet and swaying back and forth that anyone decided to look in on me. They caught me just before I passed out. Apparently the machine was turned up to its highest setting and the policy was you weren't to be left unattended while you were hooked up to the arc welder.
That was the last time I went to physical therapy for twenty three years. The shoulder did get better with some very basic exercises, so I saw no reason.to give them another shot at electrocuting me again. Over the years I strenuously argued every time the subject of a physical therapy referral came up. Give me drugs, tell me to walk it off, cut off hunks of my flesh... just don't send me back to physical therapy.
However, I've been hobbling around on this hip for a while now. I ignored my doctor's referral before Christmas, but when he called me on it after the holidays I finally admitted that I needed to do something besides "riding myself back to health" this time.
So, with all of my emotional baggage, I went to physical therapy. I actually got a no-kidding doctor-type feller looking me over. He poked, prodded, and generally twisted me up into a pretzel to isolate the muscles involved with the issue. He showed me pictures in one of them fancy medical books so I could pretend like I understood what the hell he was talking about. Then he pulled out the acupuncture needles and told me it would be a small pinch and then a deeper ache. Great, like I need any more aches. He was right about the aching, which he explained would help in the long run. Made sense to me, but then again, so did the electroshock therapy 23 years ago. I'm gullible.
I'll try to stick with it this time, because I don't want to hobble around for the rest of my life. We'll see how it goes, but if a young kid starts pulling out electrodes, I'm hobbling my fat ass out of there.
As a result of sleeping on that futon, the muscles in my right arm grew so they pinched off a nerve cluster in my shoulder. Every once in a while, a searing pain would shoot through my shoulder. This was especially fun when I was driving 70MPH on the highway. It was debilitating every time it occurred, and kinda scary for a young kid who had up until that point been more or less invincible. Even an exploding appendix hadn't dropped me. This was before years of chronic back pain and other accumulated ailments taught me my own mortality.
I went to the doctor, who gave me a bunch of 1000mg Motrin horse pills and sent me to physical therapy. Not knowing any better, I went.
When I got there, I was assigned to the only guy at the clinic with less medical experience than I had. He started sticking electrodes on my arm, explaining they would stimulate the muscles and re-train them to not pinch that nerve cluster anymore. Sounded good to me.
"Let's see. We'll stick one there and one there and another one there and..." Eventually he felt like he had coated my shoulder well enough, but looked confused when he had one left over. With a shrug, he threw it on a bare piece of skin, flipped a switch on the box, and walked away.
Initially it was interesting watching the individual muscles flex and relax. After five or ten minutes, my forehead broke out into a cold sweat and I started to feel nauseous. Not seeing the guy who was supposed to be tending to me, I tried to get the attention of someone. Anyone. They all magically were otherwise occupied and failed to notice me, and like a proper low-ranking troop I didn't want to rock the boat. It wasn't until the clinic's Chief looked across the room and noticed I was white as a sheet and swaying back and forth that anyone decided to look in on me. They caught me just before I passed out. Apparently the machine was turned up to its highest setting and the policy was you weren't to be left unattended while you were hooked up to the arc welder.
That was the last time I went to physical therapy for twenty three years. The shoulder did get better with some very basic exercises, so I saw no reason.to give them another shot at electrocuting me again. Over the years I strenuously argued every time the subject of a physical therapy referral came up. Give me drugs, tell me to walk it off, cut off hunks of my flesh... just don't send me back to physical therapy.
However, I've been hobbling around on this hip for a while now. I ignored my doctor's referral before Christmas, but when he called me on it after the holidays I finally admitted that I needed to do something besides "riding myself back to health" this time.
So, with all of my emotional baggage, I went to physical therapy. I actually got a no-kidding doctor-type feller looking me over. He poked, prodded, and generally twisted me up into a pretzel to isolate the muscles involved with the issue. He showed me pictures in one of them fancy medical books so I could pretend like I understood what the hell he was talking about. Then he pulled out the acupuncture needles and told me it would be a small pinch and then a deeper ache. Great, like I need any more aches. He was right about the aching, which he explained would help in the long run. Made sense to me, but then again, so did the electroshock therapy 23 years ago. I'm gullible.
I'll try to stick with it this time, because I don't want to hobble around for the rest of my life. We'll see how it goes, but if a young kid starts pulling out electrodes, I'm hobbling my fat ass out of there.
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