Cleaning Hearts

I was at physical therapy today, and there was another man there having his shoulder worked on. His therapist had him doing hand slides, where he has his hand on a cloth pad that he’s slowly moving up and down along the wall. Another patient, a little old woman, looked over at the man and had this exchange.

Old Woman: “You’re cleaning the walls, huh?”
Man: “Yeah, I guess so.”
AGB: “Of course. Didn’t you know that’s how we keep the place clean? We have the clients do the work for us!”
Me [laughing]: “Is that why you’re having me do foot slides over here…to clean the floor?”
AGB [laughing]: “Exactly! Now, get back to work!”

Graceful Hearts

At physical therapy today, AGB was so encouraged by my progress and enthusiasm that she decided to challenge me to walk with only one crutch. This forces me to put more weight on my injured leg, which will help me build strength faster. It also begins the arduous process of learning to walk normally again.

For this exercise, she unlocked my brace to give me greater range of motion. She then had me walk in a straight line back and forth across the clinic, focusing on placing my heel and rolling onto my toes while also controlling my balance on my leg. Since I was on “display” for everyone there, I also focused on keeping good posture, shoulders back and head held high. I felt like one of those girls practicing to walk with a book balanced on my head! I later joked with AGB. that I was doing my cotillion walk. I think she’s going to start using that term with her other patients.

UPDATE: I was practicing the walk at home later in the day, and my mom asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was trying to regain my grace. To which she quipped, “How can you regain what you never had?!” At that moment, the imaginary book on my head plummeted to the floor with a thud. But in the spirit of my newfound gracefulness and charm, I rose above the dig and responded with a dignified raspberry in her face.

Rising Hearts

AGB: “So, how have your exercises been going at home?”
Me: “Pretty well. I was doing them every two hours like you wanted me to. It was a little tough throughout the night, but I set an alarm to get me up to do them.”
AGB [a look of surprise and horror on her face]: “…”
Me [smiling]: “I’m just kidding. I didn’t get up in the middle of the night to do my exercises, but it was totally worth it to see the look on your face right now.”
AGB: “Oh my gosh! Don’t do that to me! I actually thought you misunderstood and were getting up! I was going to tell you not to do that, just get your rest. Now, you’ve got me wondering if anyone else I’ve told that to is actually getting up to do exercises.”
Me [laughing]: “I hope not.”
AGB: “Me too. Okay, starting today, I want you to start walking around with your brace unlocked at home. Remember to practice rolling your foot from your heel to your toe. But when you’re in public, I want you to keep the brace locked still.”
Me: “Is that because you’re ashamed of people seeing me walking around like a newborn calf?”
AGB [laughing]: “Well, yes. But also because I’m afraid someone might bump into you, and you’re still a little unsteady right now.”

Sliding Hearts

They wasted no time getting me back to physical therapy after my surgery. I was already doing things by the next day, which was tough. AGB had also given me some things to work on until I saw her again this morning. The two toughest things were trying to bend my knee and trying to lift my leg off the table. My knee is incredibly swollen, so I have virtually no range of motion at all. But that didn’t stop AGB from forcing me to do heel slides for ten minutes. She assures me that they’ll get easier the more that I do them, but all evidence is pointing to that contrary at the moment. I’m starting to wonder if she just enjoys torturing me.

The other issue was trying to lift my leg off the table. The act itself is incredibly painful, because it puts pressure directly where the doctor took the tendon out of my thigh, which feels like someone is stabbing me in the leg with a knife. The other problem is that I seem to have lost all muscle strength in my thigh overnight. I can’t actually make my muscles flex and lift like I used to. AGB assures me that this too will get easier with time, especially as my thigh tendon continues to heal and the pain lessens.

UPDATE: It pains me to write this next part, but after a week of doing heel slides every day, they have, in fact, gotten easier…as AGB said they would. I reluctantly admitted this to her, hoping that the news wouldn’t give her a big head. To her credit, she did her best to turn away to hide the giant smile spread across her face, but I still saw it. At least she didn’t say, “I told you so.” Instead, she sweetly said, “I’m glad that you’re making progress.” I appreciated that she let me hold onto a sliver of dignity, but we both knew that was just code for “I told you so.”

Reconstructing Hearts

The big day was finally here. I had to report to the hospital at 5:30 a.m. this morning, which was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I hadn’t eaten since eight the previous night, so I didn’t have to wait as long for my next meal. On the other hand, it meant I was up before the rooster around the corner. The experience was pretty easy and painless…except maybe for when they had to shave my entire right leg! Everyone was incredibly nice, and it seemed like it was over in the blink of an eye. I didn’t even get to count backwards from one hundred. I was out within seconds of them rolling me into the operating room.

I woke up in recovery to the face of my mom staring back at me and a glorious package of graham crackers lying on a table next to me. I pulled the sheet aside to view the damage, and I was surprised to find out that they had turned me into RoboCop while I was asleep. My leg was wrapped in bandages and gauze, which was all encased in a hip to ankle leg brace with so many straps and doohickeys that it looked straight out of a sci-fi film.

The doctor came in to let me know that everything had gone smoothly. I didn’t have a meniscus tear after all, so he’d only had to do the ACL reconstruction. He said the tendon they’d taken from my thigh was nice and fat and strong, which will make for a great new ACL. So, I guess it’s good that I opted to use my own instead of becoming Frankenstein’s monster.

After a lot of instructions and information, I was discharged around lunch time. They had given me a numbing agent during the surgery, so I didn’t really feel much discomfort. Honestly, the only ill effect was a little nausea as the anesthesia wore off, but that also could have been my extreme hunger coupled with being a little car sick. After a satisfying lunch, I spent the remainder of the day propped up on the couch, watching movies with my mom and occasionally moving my feet to help prevent blood clots.

Flossing Hearts

AGB was having me do weight shifts in physical therapy today to prepare me for some of my post-surgery rehab maneuvers. One of them consisted of me leaning forward onto my injured leg to put my full weight on it and then leaning back onto the other leg. The other one consisted of me leaning to the side onto my injured leg to put my full weight on it and then shifting to the other side to put my weight on the opposite leg.

But the way she had me doing the second one was to sort of keep my head centered above my feet and to only lean my hips to the side, which gave me a side-to-side sway. As I stood there jutting my hips out to the side and then to the other side, back and forth, over and over again, I felt like I was dancing. So, without warning, I started flossing in the middle of the physical therapy clinic, moving my arms back and forth in the opposite direction of my hips. AGB glanced over and caught me doing it and started busting out laughing. To her credit though, she came over and started flossing with me!

She really is the best physical therapist that I could have possibly asked for. In addition to being passionate about helping people and incredibly sweet, she’s also got a great sense of humor. And she makes rehab fun because she lets me be weird.

Pickle Dreams

When I was in high school, I desperately wanted to create a brain machine that could convert thoughts into images. The practical application was to be able to record a person’s dreams at night, so they’d would never forget a dream again. After finding out that the brain was basically a series of electrical impulses firing off in different parts, I assumed the science would be easy enough. Someone would just need to map out which parts fired off during different stimuli and record the electrical impulses being seen. By doing so, they could covert those impulses into a matching image.

I imagine that someone has attempted something like this before, and the fact that it’s never been done means it’s not as simple as I make it out to be. Imagine putting one hundred people in a room, hooking up their brains to monitors, and telling them to think about a pickle. Ideally, everyone’s brains should register the same electrical impulses for that same stimuli. But what if they didn’t? And what if the reason is that not everyone thinks of pickles the same way?

You might think of one of those large pickles that you get at a ballpark. I might think of a gherkin. Someone else might think of a spear. While someone else might think of a sweet pickle cut in slices with wavy ridges. To take that further, someone might imagine cheeseburgers when they think of pickles, which only complicates things. Someone else might have an emotional memory tied to pickles, like their grandfather growing cucumbers in his garden and canning pickles in his kitchen. It would be almost impossible to get consistent, repeatable results, because human thoughts are so complex and layered. Unless AI could analyze the results and find commonalities that overlap enough to guess “pickles.”

For now, our dreams will remain a mystery. But one day, we might finally be able to produce an image from a dream of a pickle, wearing a cape and saving a damsel in distress.

Kicking Hearts

I had my first prehab physical therapy today. My therapist, AGB, concentrated on building muscle strength in my thigh and improving my range of motion. The idea is to get my leg stronger, so the residual muscle atrophy after my surgery is less, and to get me used to the exercises that I’ll have to do post-surgery. I’m interested in not just recovering my current strength but being stronger than I am now too. I’d like to be able to sidekick someone in martial arts so hard that they comically fly off their feet and backwards in a “U” shape.

Yesterday, our neighbor caught us outside to tell us that she’ll have to cut the tree down in her yard that’s near our fence. Apparently, it attracts mice and rats that like to eat the berries. I told my spousal unit that our neighbor won’t need to cut it down, because I’ll have legs so strong that I’ll be able to just kick it down for her! It’ll be like Jean Claude Van Damme in the movie Kickboxer, when he kicked down a bamboo tree.

Knowing Hearts

After a long, drawn out saga in which the MRI facility refused to review my MRI results and send them to my doctor, I finally went in person to demand some movement. I walked away with the images and the report. Funny how they couldn’t get it done in a week and a half but suddenly could get it done in an hour when pressed.

It turns out that I did tear my ACL, which while disappointing, is not unexpected. I had plenty of time to come to grips with that reality. It’s just some relief to finally know and be able to have a path forward. Honestly, I’m more worried about my second accident and what additional damage it may have caused.

Screaming Hearts

I was playing the Wii with my son tonight, because he was bored and wanted to do something active. We played a couple of tennis matches, bowled, and did a round of golf all without incident. After that, I was pretty much done, but he wanted to do boxing, which I hate, so I left him to do it alone.

A short while later, he came upstairs crying. He wanted to quit in the middle of the boxing match because the computer was beating him. Trying to use this as a teachable moment that we don’t quit just because things get hard, I went downstairs to finish the bout. The reason that I hate Wii boxing so much is that the interface doesn’t do what your hands are doing very well. You swing, but the character on the screen doesn’t mirror you, and the computer ends up knocking you out. It frustrates me to no end. That’s exactly what happened to me when I took over his bout.

So, I was left standing there in my den, screaming at the TV and complaining at the injustice. I turned to say something to my son, and that’s when I felt another pop in my knee. But this one hurt so much worse than the one at martial arts. I immediately fell to the floor screaming in pain. My son didn’t know what to do, so he just started yelling for his mother. I writhed around like that for what seemed like ten minutes, directing my wife to try to calm down my son, who was sobbing uncontrollably.

My knee, which had felt okay up to that point, swelled up a lot and was very painful. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand. It felt like what the doctor expected the first time I went to see him. I was afraid that I’d just made it much worse than it already was. And I was left with regrets, questioning why I didn’t just turn off the boxing match instead playing through it. Why was I so stupid? Why was I so stupid?