Tag Archives: physical therapy

A Shoulder To Cry On

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Loyal readers are no doubt sputtering at that headline, wondering how on earth I am going to segue from “A Shoulder To Cry On” into a discussion on pretzel-thoughts, which I promised last time I would discuss this time.

Well, I’m not going to. You’re going to have to wait a week for that scintillating discussion, maybe even longer.

Depends on how good the anesthesia is.

See, on Tuesday, Nov. 20, the bone doc, Doc Z., is going to pin my tendon back on to my rotator cuff so I can use my right arm again without rattling the roof rafters with my screaming. And that little bit of surgery is all that’s on my mind right now.

“Pin” is not the correct medical term, of course. I believe he will actually sew it back on, a technique I never quite mastered, despite two terms of home economics classes in seventh and eighth grades at Grover Cleveland Junior High School, the same school where I was taught to dance the hula and square dance.

Along with Vicky L. and Kathy R., I was quickly identified as a H.E.H. (home economics hopeless) and forced to sit in the kitchenette closest to the teacher, where we scorched the toast, burnt the broiled grapefruit, spilled the tea, and generally lived up to our potential.

When it came time to switch over to the sewing half of the course, we were faced with the task of making a wrap-around skirt. I chose a trendy denim fabric, and stared at it helplessly for several class sessions, measuring out my pattern pieces again and again. Even Vicky L. was ahead of me. I never did sew the buttonhole; I just punched it through with the scissors and let it go at that.

It was worse in eighth grade, where the normally shy and sedate Sandy B. led the rebellion to make an A-line skirt and weskit (very trendy) rather than the normal jumper (very fifties), leaving all us H.E.H. in a panic. I didn’t even try. I gave my fabric to my first-cousin-once-removed, who gave it back all sewn up. I didn’t care. I managed to hold my head up high when forced to trot across the stage in the mandatory home economics fashion show. I wore the hated stockings but refused the makeup. I have my limits.

So I can’t blame M.S. or the stroke for my inability to sew, sad to say. But I can blame both for the shoulder surgery. Without M.S., I never would have been taking BrainScar, the drug we all (tacitly or not) blame for the stroke I had in August 2011. And it was either M.S. or the stroke that caused me to stumble and fall up the stairs that night in September that tore apart my rotator cuff.

Rotator cuffs can fall apart all on their own, because they are used for so much. They lie deep inside your shoulders, underneath all the muscles and bones and tendons. They’re kind of like Grand Central Station for your arms. Move your thumb? Gotta go through the rotator cuff.

One of the last things I did this week was have a tooth fixed. I found out that my dental hygienist is recovering from rotator cuff surgery, caused by years and years of cleaning people’s teeth. Poor Laurie!

It takes months to recover, lots of physical therapy, with and without physical therapists. Fortunately I already have found some good P.T.’s. I was working with them on this shoulder until we decided that the pain wasn’t getting any better and an MRI was needed to see if the rotator cuff was in fact torn.

Answer: Yep.

So a week after the surgery (just long enough for all the anesthesia to have worn off), I’ll return to the physical therapists to start the recovery process.

I’ve been trying to picture what sort of bandaging they’ll wrap me in after this surgery. The doctor was a bit vague about what sort of incision he was going to do: arthroscopic, he said, but then opening it up a bit, waving his fingers around in the air as if that explained it all, assuring me that he would also remove the arthritic matter that was in there. Seventy minutes, tops.

So I figure either a little Band-Aid, like you can get at the supermarket, or a two-by-four strapped across my shoulders with a roll of duct tape. I’ll have to go through doors sideways and carry a beeper for when I back up.

In either event, it won’t be me rattling the rafters anymore. And for that I am very happy.

The view from shoe level

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When those nice little old ladies fall on T.V., they always show the devoted daughters plugging in the handy dandy tracking device that calls the ever-vigilant bright-eyed neatly-dressed attendant at some distant calling center who promptly promises to send help “right away” when dear old mom next tumbles to the ground, sending prunes or grape nuts scattering in all directions.

What they don’t show you are the hours of physical therapy the nice little old ladies need before they are allowed back in those accident-prone, handicapped-inaccessible kitchens, the ones with overhead cupboards, ancient faucets, outdated appliances, and lack of walking space.

Let me tell you, falling and not being able to get up is the least of the problem. It’s likely to be that last bit of rest you’re going to get for a long time.

Sooner or later, a neighbor or friend or partner or wife or husband or child will wander by and you will have to admit that you are not looking at the interesting mid-20th century variegated pattern in the handsome wall-to-wall carpeting of your hallway, that in fact they might as well haul you to your feet, that—ouch—your right arm isn’t quite what it should be and perhaps we’d better call the doctor.

And so begins the usual round of Dr. This and Dr. That and x-ray this and x-ray that. It all takes a couple of weeks and a bunch of hemming and hawing and gulping down horse pills and sleeping with heat patches glued to your arm and tossing and turning all night long and nearly dropping the half-gallon of milk because you forget that you are one-armed these days.

And of course I can’t drive because I use hand controls and that takes two to tango. And oh, have I mentioned that CF broke her OTHER hand and is in a cast for three weeks? We shan’t discuss the sad circumstances under which it happened except to say that I will describe my stupidest fall and then tell you that hers was even more stupid:

I was doing yard work a few years ago, walking down our driveway, pushing our 65-gallon plastic garden waste cart ahead of me. It looks just like a garbage cart, the kind the town gives you for your garbage. Fortunately it was empty, and the top was open. I was tired, always my excuse. I lost my footing and stumbled forward, and ended up flat on my stomach, with my head and shoulders inside the garden waste cart. As far as I know, no one saw me. It happened on my birthday. At least hers wasn’t on her birthday. But it was close!

My most recent fall did not happen out of sight of friends and neighbors; it happened in plain sight of CF and just out of sight of NF, who had, let’s say, “neglected” to hold the door open for me, causing me to stumble up the short flight of stairs tween garage and laundry room, crashing to the ground and somewhat crushing the semi-antique aluminum cake carrier I was no longer holding but instead flinging to the ground, although I did try to brace myself by pushing off the wall dead ahead of me which simply caused me to double-bounce on top of said carrier and ricochet off the pile of newspapers waiting to be recycled. There was a slight cushioning effect, the one and only time, I am sure, that Mitt Romney will ever be of benefit to me.

The x-rays showed damage that will require physical therapy, which did not surprise me. I have done this before, because I fall a lot, and I always damage the right shoulder, which amuses me. I am left-handed, and for many, many years, I was a fast-pitch softball catcher. I imagined that at the least I would have new knees by now, or a ruined left shoulder. But no, those joints are fine. It is the much less used right shoulder that is turning arthritic, has bone spurs, and is continually being crushed and mangled by my falls.

The doctors can’t tell without an MRI if I’ve actually “torn something” in the rotator cuff or not, but they shot it full of cortisone and now it’s off to P.T. twice a week, where, should I fall, I will be immediately whipped back to my feet by two or more extraordinarily athletic young people. I need to warn them that I get dizzy if I stand up too fast. These are the same people who coaxed CF’s first broken paw back into shape, therapy that involved, among other magic treatments, dipping her hand in hot wax, a treatment that sounds so spa-like that I purr with envy. I suspect the closest I will come to hot wax will be bumping into the air freshener candle in the bathroom.

However many times I may stumble in P.T., I am sadly certain that I will fall again in real life, that I will again damage this shoulder. What I think I really need is to go to Falling School. I need to learn to fall properly. They must teach that somewhere. There must be professional fallers. Someone to teach you to not stick out your arms so you wreck your shoulders, but to tuck in your arms and roll with the flow. Someone to teach you to do a floor routine, like those gymnasts in the Olympics. After all, when I was in grade school, they taught us to survive a nuclear bomb. Certainly they can teach me to survive a three foot drop to the floor now.

I’m not too old. I can still learn. And I’m pretty sure there’s enough newspaper in the garage to use for cushioning.

Spring peepers

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Every family has its own holiday traditions. Some gather ‘round the spinet to yodel out the carols; others spin the dreidel; others hunt the boggy beds for plastic eggs filled with cash or chocolate; others look forward to a nice piece of hamentash come Purim.

Mine invented a new one for itself this Easter. We made dioramas.

The idea, alas, wasn’t ours, although it should have been. It was right up our alley. After all, we invented the tradition of recreating the Thanksgiving meal in Play-Doh some 30 years ago. But that’s another story. Continue reading →

Take me out to a whole new ball game

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Sometime in January we managed to pry our son’s baseball uniform off of him so we could wash it in time for the games that began again last week. Actually, he outgrew the uniform, which was helpful, because it was really starting to stink.

He does have one non-uniform shirt. He got it from his baseball team. It reads, “There’s no off-season in baseball.” They mean it. But they do take the month of December off.

But now that the purportedly nice weather is here again in Olywa (which means that we are moving towards the 10 days of relatively light sprinkling rain before we hit the three months of dry scorching drought before we hit the nine months of daily downpour) (and people LOVE it here!), it’s time for all of us parents to get our baseball gear in gear too.

My son’s gear has been in his baseball bag since time began, well, since he joined this baseball club, which was four years ago. We dump it out from time to time, extract the empty bottled water bottles, gum wrappers, unidentifiable icky matter, unspeakably petrified sock remnants, hot dog fragments, and a Continue reading →

Victory laps

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Forgive me if this seems rushed. I had another blog entry all ready to go, but then two things happened that I decided were more important to write about, so I rushed to write this. That’s a bit of a joke, since me rushing to write anything these days means it takes me four days instead of seven.

But as you can see, my mind tends to wander a bit now, so my writing wanders too, and I really should try to get to the point a bit earlier, because I do actually have two this time, both victories of a small nature.

The thing with a brain trauma is there is no triumphant re-entry to the real world. There is no gigantic cast that comes off to reveal a healed leg, or realigned elbow, or un-discombobulated innards (is the opposite of discombobulated innards combobulated outtards?). All there is with a brain trauma is a bunch of little tiny steps back towards maybe normal, maybe not. Maybe yourself, maybe not. Maybe your old self, maybe your new self. You never know.

These two victories I think are one of each: one of maybe my new self, one of maybe my old self.

My new self graduated from physical therapy. I still walk with a cane, but that’s mostly for my own sanity. It reminds me to be careful. I think it makes other people give me wider berth. And it comes in handy when I am about to take a header, which is what it’s for, after all, and I do come close to falling way too often. So I guess I still need it. @$#%%@. And it gives me cred when I use a disabled parking spot. You should see the glares otherwise. Just ’cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it ain’t there, folks!

But the big deal here is that I can step over boxes and stand on one leg and toss a ball and catch it and stand up/sit down repeatedly all so well that my physical therapist says I don’t have to see him anymore. Either that or we finally just ran out of stuff to talk about.

These therapy sessions take place in a big room, and everybody is talking and stepping and shuffling and bouncing at once, one big happy trying-to-become-better group. Some of the folks are from the rehab center next door, the one from which I fled, and others are outpatients like me. Occasionally I spot a client younger than I am, but usually I am the spryest in the room. My therapist is thrilled that I can throw a ball, and we got quite involved in kicking a soccer ball around, and then graduated to throwing it against a wall, which necessitated moving to a different room, which, I think, is what rang the death knell on my therapy. I was too good.

To which I say, good riddance.

So I hobbled a victory lap on that one.

And then there’s the old me victory. This one involves the two women who came to visit me when I was unconscious in the ICU, Julia and Teri.

I’ve known Julia and Teri literally since the first week I moved to Olywa. Our sons were all in first grade together, and I met them on the first day of class. Julia’s family and my family were new in town, and Teri and some other mothers fledged us as neo-Northwesterners. Julia has been caring for my conure (a kind of parrot) since August, and Teri has driven me to and from physical therapy once or twice a week. They have been wonderful friends, and they have wanted to take me to lunch for months.

And finally I felt ready. Finishing therapy had something to do with it. The new me was set free to let the old me emerge.

Going out for lunch with friends might not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge undertaking to someone who cannot multitask. It involves a great deal of planning and timing, and I got almost all of it right.

I had to start to prepare the night before, because I needed to set an alarm so I would wake up in time (my seizure medication can zone me out midmorning); I had to remember to give myself my insulin shot because my partner had left at 4:30 that morning and wasn’t there to do it; I had to remember to get my son situated because my partner wasn’t there to do it; I had to make sure four cats and a dog weren’t fighting like, well, cats and dogs; and I had to remember to get my little thank-you gift for Teri together and that’s what I forgot.

We had a very nice lunch and I had to trick Teri into coming back into the house with me so I could scramble around and get her gift together to give to her to thank her for schlepping me to and from P.T. all of those times so the slightly gimpy new me could emerge, able to step over 8-inch tall boxes and toss a soccer ball against any wall quite ably, and the old me could go to lunch with Julia and Teri and carry on a conversation, all the while downing a rather tasty lunch of Thai Ginger with Tofu.

It’s nice when the old me gets along with the new me.

 

All. The. Time.

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Here’s the thing about being in the hospital: either you’re on the verge of dying, or you’re on the verge of dying.

Wha?

I mean, either you have so many tubes sticking in and out of you, and doctors and nurses poking and prodding and assessing and prognosticating and muttering that you’re about to croak, OR everything has been patched up so neatly and so well that there’s nothing left to do except wait for the doctor to finish talking on the phone so he can tell the head nurse so she can tell the nursing assistant so she can tell the orderly so he can get a wheelchair so he can wheel you out the door to physical therapy before you keel over from boredom.

The best part about going to P.T.—the best best part—is that it gets me away from the television. You’d think I’d appreciate the change in scenery, the chance to stretch my legs, someone with an intact brain to talk to perhaps, but all I care about it getting away from the television.

That roommate of mine? The 75-year-old living in sin with her boyfriend? Lipitor, Lipitor, Lipitor? She keeps the television on all the time. To Fox News.

All. The. Time.

The television is attached to the wall opposite our beds, near the ceiling. There’s a speaker built in to each bed. For some reason, mine won’t shut off. She is hard of hearing and keeps cranking the volume. Every time she leaves her bed, I turn off the television. She never takes the hint. I ask her to turn it off. She leaves it off for five minutes.

Fox News. All. The. Time.

P.T. for me consists of trying to walk with a walker. Yes, it has tennis balls cupped over the feet. No, I am not wearing two hospital gowns. I am wearing my own clothing. Well, sweat pants and tee shirt. And a gait belt.

A gait belt is a long strip of cotton webbing that gets buckled around your waist so the therapist can grab hold of you should you start to fall. Like the diapers, they’re built for two, so there’s a lashing and whipping of the extra stuff every time one goes on.

And they come in different colors. I don’t know if the color is significant, like a karate belt. Some people had fluorescent orange ones. I was sure I would get one of those, since I was still a FALL RISK. But no, I got an ordinary white one. Maybe the P.T. department didn’t prejudge.

Walking with a walker was hard. I found that I could not talk and walk at the same time. Being brain injured made that impossible. As near as I can reproduce it, this is how my brain felt when my therapist asked a question while I was trying to move my left foot:

“—!z^!—##!’’”#$!———<><><<<<<<<!!!!!!//\\<ffgsaw/.tttgdQFqssfootr#celqhigw2her??a12?”

which, loosely translated, means, “Can you lift that foot higher?”

But at least I couldn’t hear Fox News. All. The. Time.

My walk ended in the rehab unit’s cafeteria. This room has five big round tables flanked by sinks and refrigerators and a television. There are some magazines to read, mostly old copies of Arthritis Today and the hospital’s in-house monthly. We’re supposed to hang out here and chat. My therapist sat me down and got me a cup of ice water. At the table with me were two younger men, the only other residents who were younger than I am. We were the only people in the room.

I had just a split second to decide, before the therapist disappeared: did I stay with these two guys who were sitting two feet from a 36-inch T.V. watching some program featuring men with long bushy beards, lots of beer cans, and alligators, or did I go back to Fox News (which, for a split second of that split second, became one in my damaged brain, one huge bushy-haired beer-swilling no-new-taxes reptilian newscaster spewing about flecks of Obamacare), a decision so critical to my future that I was driven to my feet with all the urgency I could muster (took three rocks back and forth, as I recall, and a push off with both hands, and I had to grab the table).

“WAY!” I screamed. It was a strangled, warbled, garbled, indistinct, plaintive scream, but a scream nevertheless.

“Yes?” said the therapist as she turned back towards me.

“I want to go home,” I whispered.