{"id":4524,"date":"2012-07-26T18:21:21","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T00:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2012-07-26T18:24:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T00:24:29","slug":"physical-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2012\/07\/26\/physical-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Physical Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The odds are pretty good that I\u2019m writing this between naps.\u00a0 I\u2019d forgotten how strong the urge to sleep is when recovering from surgery.\u00a0 When I had shoulder surgery years ago, I entered this strange, timeless world for weeks afterwards \u2026 awake for three hours, asleep for four, awake for two more hours, asleep for five, awake for another four hours, etc.\u00a0 I had to sleep sitting up in a chair.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t work and couldn\u2019t focus on a book, so I watched TV.\u00a0 I ended up watching the HBO series The Wire<\/em> from beginning to end, all five seasons.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not as messed up this time around (the shoulder surgery was very invasive and massively painful) but I am sleeping more than usual.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure the pain pills have something to do with that.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get by without them for several hours at a time, then the pain kicks in out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

The pain kicked in today because of physical therapy, my first of several upcoming sessions.\u00a0 As I told the therapist, I\u2019m not sure if people go into her profession because they\u2019re nice and want to help others, or because it\u2019s the only way sadists can get paid to inflict pain without going to dental school.<\/p>\n

\"\"As you can see from the picture, the knee is still so swollen, I don\u2019t appear to have a kneecap.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if my thigh now connects directly to my shin with no knee in between.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, a leg with no apparent kneecap has limited ability to bend, so that was the sadis \u2026 er, therapist\u2019s goal today:\u00a0 bending the knee to at least 90 degrees.\u00a0 We got there after several attempts.\u00a0 I appreciated her help so much, when I came home I found one of the girls\u2019 dolls that looked vaguely like the therapist and stuck pins in it.<\/p>\n

The woman on the rack next to mine was also receiving post-operative therapy for the same procedure on the same knee from the same surgeon on the same day.\u00a0 Apparently he lines up all his left-knee meniscus patients in a row and goes at it.\u00a0 As someone who reads a fair bit about economics, I appreciate the efficiency.<\/p>\n

In chatting about our injuries, I learned that the woman apparently tore her meniscus while playing tennis.\u00a0 She explained that she\u2019s giving this physical therapy all she\u2019s got because she\u2019s a senior-league champion and is determined to play in a tournament a month from now.\u00a0 I was tempted to reply that I\u2019m giving it all I\u2019ve got because I plan to kick Jimmy Moore\u2019s butt in disc golf in November, but thought better of it.<\/p>\n

After inflicting pain on my knee for an hour, the therapist gave me two pages of detailed instructions on how to inflict the same pain on myself at home \u2013 twice per day.\u00a0 Okay, if that\u2019s what it takes to walk normally again and have my kneecap reappear, I\u2019ll do it.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t have to like it.<\/p>\n

\"\"As soon as I came home to begin recovery, Sara declared herself my at-home nurse and made herself a hat worthy of the role.\u00a0 She\u2019s been a huge help, bringing me snacks, drinks, fresh ice packs, etc.\u00a0 She was a bit traumatized seeing me lying on a gurney in a hospital gown with an IV tube sticking out of my arm, so I think adopting the role of caretaker is partly her way of getting over it.\u00a0 But mostly she\u2019s being helpful because she\u2019s a sweet girl who loves her daddy … although she told me today she’s going to coach me through my physical therapy at home, so I reserve the right to declare her the sister of Damian from The Omen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t looked for any undiscovered jewels like The Wire<\/em> to pass the time in my easy chair, but I have been catching up on some movies I\u2019d saved on the DVR and watching re-runs of Seinfeld <\/em>here and there.\u00a0 One of these days I\u2019d like to watch that series end to end and capture all the references to meat and fat being bad for us.\u00a0 I loved that show and still find it funny, but sometimes I wonder if The Guy From CSPI was a script consultant.<\/p>\n

I appreciate all the wishes for a speedy recovery people have posted here and on Facebook.\u00a0 Chareva is serving me good recovery foods \u2013 meats, butter, farm eggs, green vegetables \u2013 and I expect to heal up quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The odds are pretty good that I\u2019m writing this between naps.\u00a0 I\u2019d forgotten how strong the urge to sleep is when recovering from surgery.\u00a0 When I had shoulder surgery years… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4529,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/4529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}