Physical Therapy Fitness
Mondays and Wednesdays I have physical therapy or fitness workouts at Terrio Therapy Fitness. I started out in physical therapy 3 years ago before and after having two knee surgeries on my left knee and have now graduated to the ‘post-rehab’ fitness program. I’m a “lifer” my doctor and physical therapist agree. My knee problems require that I continue in a fitness program from now until… eternity. Lucky me! I used to go three times a week when I was a patient of physical therapy (and insurance paid the bill); now that I’m in the fitness program I go two times a week (because 3 times a week is more expensive and I’m paying the bill).

I will say that I am walking, climbing stairs and actually running (a personal miracle) today because of the incredibly talented, skilled and dedicated staff at Terrio Therapy Fitness. A place where physical therapy is administered to people in severe pain with great humor. These people get paid to hurt you while healing you, but they manage to make you laugh through your tears. They all have wickedly sadistic sarcastic sense of humors-- it’s great. A famous motto of theirs is “Kinder gentler therapy” this usually being spoken after they’ve taken whichever part of your body is injured and bent, stretched, pulled, and contorted it in ways you thought not possible-- while you scream, cry and plead for them to please stop. And sometimes they even electrocute your muscles to retrain them to work again. How fun is that?! And yet they show such great compassion for their patients while being tuff and pushing you to make progress-- to recover from your injuries. People who are injured need pushing. We would never get better without someone pushing us to the next little milestone.

Today at physical therapy while doing my fitness workout I saw one of the physical therapists working with a patient who had recently had knee surgery. He was bending the patient’s leg at the knee trying to get the knee to move. There wasn’t much movement in the knee, just in the rest of the patient’s body as he contorted with pain. “I remember that” I said to the physical therapist “Yes, you do.” He replied, then told his patient: “See people do get better.” I used to be in this patient’s position. I used to be tortured, electrocuted, and have my ankle tied to the table leg while they forced my knee to bend three times a week, and I paid them for the pleasure!

My first year in physical therapy I learned to walk and worked on getting movement and mobility in my knee, the second year I learned to go up and down stairs and built up strength in atrophied muscles, the third year I transitioned into the post-rehab fitness program where I work out under an athletic trainer’s supervision continuing to build strength and range of motion in my knee and adding a total body workout as well.

Way back when I had little mobility in my knee… I was doing my exercises on a table next to a new knee patient that my physical therapist was evaluating and listening to the detailed technical explanation of his injury and the plan for his recovery that he received. I was a little bit jealous. I didn’t receive such a detailed technical explanation with my knee injury. I began to wonder if it was because this was a man in his 40’s who probably expected such an explanation. I asked my physical therapist when his new patient went off to do an exercise “How come he got the detailed technical explanation and I didn’t?” He looked at me and said: “Because your knee is ‘really’ fucked up.” “Oh!” I replied. What else can you say to such great scientific medical explanations? However, it was exactly what I needed to know. I had a lot of work to do to recover from my knee injury. And in defense of my physical therapist… he would never say something like that to a new patient. But he had been torturing me for over a year at that time. I used to refer to physical therapy as the 'torture chamber' back then… I now no longer think of it that way.

Now it is a place where I work out with a good looking but unfortunately married athletic trainer who pushes me to be a better stronger person and I’ve lost 50 pounds in the process. He tortures me in a completely different way. By saying words like “versa-climber I want 5 minutes” and then I wander off to the dreaded versa-climber the most difficult machine in the entire place especially for a knee injury person. Muscles I never knew I had hurt… but in a good way.

And my physical therapist has nick-named me skinny (once they nick-name you, you're part of their tribe). His "Hi ya Skinny" makes me feel better than most things in this world! He recently told me I should write a book called: 'The Long Road Back My Life in Physical Therapy' after I told him the story of my personal miracle-- running in the park with my Goddaughter. My running made him very happy and proud I think.

You may be wondering why my recovery from my knee injury has taken so long. It's because "My knee is 'really' fucked up"! Even my doctor gave me a PG version of that scientific medical explanation stating: "This is not a 'happy' knee".

Oh and in case you were wondering-- my left knee cost around $80,000 so far in medical expenses... I probably could have gotten a bionic knee for that.  posted by Matildakay at 12:04 AM