I just finished another prolonged series of physical therapy sessions. This one stretched back to my last trip to Disney World, where I got to the point with my back that it was just hurting so much by the end of the day that I was good for nothing more than lying on the floor. Having decided that was Not Normal, I figured I’d give my good friends at Allied Physical Therapy another call.
Once they looked at it, they confirmed that my back was definitely not doing okay, and we’ve been working on it ever since. My back has given me trouble for decades, so it felt good to finally be doing something about it.
Was it successful? That’s hard to say. As long as I don’t go on long walks or sit in chairs without arms, my back usually doesn’t decide to complain much. So (naturally) I’ve learned to do my best not to go on long walks or sit in chairs without arms. In other words, it doesn’t hurt me until it does. So right now, it doesn’t hurt me.
However, there have been a couple of times it’s started to hurt, and I’ve done my exercises, and it stopped hurting. That’s true progress right there, and I’m hoping I can keep that up the next time I have Disney levels of excursions planned. (Not only that, but I’ve been doing the exercises regularly, which should help a lot toward not having my back hurt at all.)
It feels like a lot of “getting old” involves figuring out what exactly my body is doing, and how to do what I can to make it function properly. When I was younger, I could get by just winging it all the time, and so I didn’t pay nearly as much attention to what I was feeling and why. (I’m not talking about emotions. I’m talking about physical sensations.) These days, I now do stretches for my shoulder, my back, my jaw, my neck, my hands, and my legs. When something’s feeling off, I know which stretch and exercise to do, and things go back to normal.
While I suppose it’s a pain to have to do all of these different stretches just to make sure I’m feeling okay, I’m also very grateful to know what things I can do to feel better. It’s gotten so that I view physical therapy as about as useful as spreadsheets, and if you know me, you know that’s high praise indeed.