And what, I know you will ask yourself, does this subject have to do with Pathways....the title of my blog?
My Physical Therapist Smacked me!!
The answer is, absolutely nothing....this blog post has nothing to do with Pathways...the title of my blog!
Or maybe it does have something to do with it, I don't know. But suffice it to say that My physical therapist smacked me today, and I deserved it.
I am Two weeks out of surgery to repair a badly damaged knee that I had been ignoring for about 15 years; thus allowing so much damage that it got to the point that my leg was collapsing on a regular basis. I have flown face forward and down onto such floors as the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, The Basilica of St. Vincent's Abbey, and Hartsfield International Airport, among others. And so it was time to go and meet with my orthopaedic surgeon and pray not to be yelled at too much. Need I say that my surgeon had given up on me, and since my father passed on years ago, could not call him to let him know that I was doing extreme damage to myself.
Back when Andrew was much younger, he broke his arm, and Dr. Moeller was the MAN we saw because my father, also an orthopaedic surgeon, had told me this was who to see in Atlanta. Specifically, we knew that I would need to have knee replacements because of my fondness of jumping off of high places and landing like a cat on targets far below, bashing my body into rocks, and jumping horses, riding rodeo, and doing any number of any kind of sports that were just a wee bit out of the ordinary. At a very young age, I had some of the most extensive knee injury that anyone had ever seen, and my father wanted to make sure I knew where to go when I got around to it.
Well, I didn't really get around to it until I could actually predict that my knee was going to give way, and then I waited another 5 years before calling the MAN!
When I went into meet with him, it was as though he was waiting for me. He strode into the room and slapped the xrays up onto the machine without even glancing at me, and began speaking as though we had ended a conversation 15 minutes earlier about this very subject. When he finally turned around with a glare in his eye he said "So, do you think you waited long enough to do this? This is massive damage. How do you walk?"
I was embarassed....but cool....
My surgeon is my friend still, and when we talk with each other about this he casually pats my arm and gives me a hug because he knows what a slug I am when it comes to doing things that interrupt my personal routine.
And that brings me back around to the subject of the post "My physical therapist smacked me today!"
Why, you ask, would my physical therapist smack me??? Well, Greg also has gotten a load of my "WAYS" over the last two weeks. Intimately familiar with the knee replacement procedure, there were some things that I did not actually know about it, and so today, when he asked me how I was and I mentioned that the aching I was experiencing was coming from deep within bone and was unrelenting, he did not miss a beat. His gaze riveted on my husband, Jim, sitting across from him, Greg asked me if I, perchance, had been walking on my leg without using my walker to support myself. Inside, I gasped. I could not lie to him and so I admitted that yes, I have been walking short distances, making the bed, doing laundry and other and various chores without using my walker for support. I have also taken my shower without using the shower chair, standing freely in the shower and enjoying the warmth and comfort.
It was then that Greg, my physical therapist whom I adore, asked for my hand. I placed my hand in his and he smacked it hard enough so that it stung....SMACK! Almost as hard as my Bishop smacked me on the cheek at confirmation...but that sting back then stung a whole lot longer than this one did. I remember flushing a deep red that day in the cathedral in Chicago. This was almost as bad.
So I won't be doing anything anymore without using my walker for support. Greg got a kick out of being able to smack a Benedictine sister, considering the fact that as a boy he was smacked plenty on the hand with a ruler in the Catholic school he attended. His delight was that he could smack me hand to hand...without benefit of the ruler.
I know that y'all will wonder why I am confessing this today here in my blog. Perhaps that is why this blog is entitled Pathways....Pray about it!
