Standing Still and Work

Yesterday, I was at physical therapy. Part of my home exercise program (aka HEP) is to do three sets of standing on injured/recovering leg for one minute. Evan had me to this yesterday in therapy. I asked how I should hold my good leg.

"How about up at ninety degrees?" he suggested.

"Okay," I said. I did as told, no problem.

When the timer rang, he said, "That was too easy. Put your good leg out and then move it back and forth, but slowly, and then hold it in position for a few seconds before you move it back. When you stretch your leg back, bend your torso so it is even with your leg."

Okay, fine. This was harder than I thought it would be. I was sloppy, but could get through it.

The thing that stuck with me was the "too easy" part. Can't something in this process be too easy? There are million of things I can't do yet. Can't I celebrate and slack with maybe the handful of things I can actually nail?

I thought about standing still. As you may have figured out by now, I am a balletophile. Dance was my "sport" growing up. One of the very first things you learn in ballet is how to stand still. Why? There are many times where lots of dancers are on stage and only a few (or one) are moving. Here is one of my favorite pieces of classical ballet, the pas de quatre from Swan Lake.  Notice the four dancers moving in perfect unison. It is brilliant. Now notice the two dozen dancers standing perfectly still on the sides of the stage. They are are doing a great job of standing still for more than a minute and a half. You can't see them in every shot of the video, but in a live performance, they flank the stage and don't move while there are solos, pas de deuxs, etc.

I am good at standing still. Ta da! Yet, there is much more work to be done in building my endurance and strength. Let me emphasize work. I am almost six weeks post-surgery and I have a new perspective. I remember once before my surgery, I was in the Sports Medicine Clinic waiting room and a woman struck up a conversation with me. She was older, probably in her sixties. She was going to need a second surgery on her knee because she didn't do physical therapy after the first surgery. I wonder if the clinic paid her to sit there and tell people that. She was the cautionary tale of what happens when you don't do your PT.

I thought I would enjoy PT as a way to get back into shape after the surgery. I enjoy exercising, even if I hadn't made it a high level priority before my skiing accident. At the very least, I walked my dog two or three times a day. I remembered my Grandma Jennings would walk with her friend Inga every day and that was her exercise. (Those women were fast walkers and talked as they clipped along.*) I figured walking Fox was at least as good as the exercise my grandmother got. A neighbor of mine got spinal cancer a dozen years ago and her doctor told her to get a dog so she would walk an hour a day. She did. Her cancer went away and Mittens is a fixture in our neighborhood.

One of my goals is to walk my dog again. I didn't realize what a low-bar goal this was. I walked my dog the other night, but I still can't walk up or downstairs properly. This bring me back to physical therapy. I had thought PT would help me progress faster and more efficiently. I thought there would be natural healing, and the PT would supplement it.

Now I get the sense that that notion was wrong. While there is natural healing of my knee, the PT is a necessary step to regaining my functionality. While I am choosing to go to PT and am working on my home exercises, PT isn't a choice. I have to do it if I want to walk up and downstairs again like I used to.


* When I would visit my grandmother, I would occasionally join my grandmother and Inga in their walk. I remember the last time I walked with them a few weeks before my grandmother died. "If you ever need to get a divorce, get a good lawyer," my grandmother said.

"Get one of those lady lawyers," Inga said. "They work so hard." Her niece had divorced a partner in the accounting firm where I used to work. According to Inga, he made an obscene amount of money. I guess this lady lawyer made sure Inga's neice and her family were well taken care of.