Therapy Gets Physical

I don't know if I've mentioned this (and I'm too lazy to look it up), but my PT with Tina and Steph is held at the Akron General Health and Wellness Center in Montrose which is largely a workout gym with doctor's office space and a Subway. Still, it's pretty kick-ass.

My last couple sessions with Steph have been held in the main workout area, since she was working with me and other patients in physical rehab simultaneously. My execrises are all eye-coordination based, so I'm standing facing the wall looking to the average observer like I'm doing nothing with a background of every concievable piece of workout equipment being operated by everybody from overachieving mall-walkers to mini-Scwarzenegger iPod-sporting walking muscles.

Between sets of eyeball exercises, I look longingly at all the wonderful exercise equipment. I miss working out even more than I thought I would, and seeing all these people freely exercising on world-class machinery makes me nearly drool with envy. While those sweaty-but-lucky stiffs work their obliques on equipment ergonomically and physiologically engineered to maximize muscular performance through resistance training and energy retention, I'm batting a lavender balloon back and forth with Steph (No shit - it was a test of my reaction time and reflexes. At least that's what Steph told me... either that or she's one of the shittiest balloon-batters on record - I actually kicked a few of them into play like a valiumed-up soccer ball they were so far out of reach!)

There's the balloon-batting exercise and the soccer-ball-swinging exercise where I hold the ball with both hands outstretched and focus my eyes on the logo while swinging it up and down, then sideways. The point of that exercise was to reacclimate me to the peripheral vision-blur of rapid panoramic motion, but I kind of cheated and turned into a bit of an oblique exercise by turning much farther than required. Sure, the blur nearly made me puke, but I snuck in an ab exercise under the radar. Tee hee.

After those highly useful yet decidedly unstudly exercises, Steph said that she noticed I was hunching my shoulders forward even while exercising (a common unconscious defensive reaction following a severe head-bonking). She then said the words I never thought I was going to hear again... "I'm going to set you up on one of these machines over here to work out your shoulders so they'll relax."

A physical therapist telling me to engage in physical exercise... with a cool machine and everything! It was just five minutes at a low setting on a handbike, but for the first time in four friggin' months, I felt like I was actually honest-to-Pete recovering all the way to the core of my being.

Of course as I type now after my fifth straight full workday in December as an accountant whose office went sans-receptionist this week (Jenna caught the infamous Thing Going 'Round), the inside of my skull feels like a used pipecleaner and my vision is so blurry I'd give Lindsay Lohan the keys... but dammit - I FEEL like I'm recovering!