Albert Schweitzer said, "One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity." So happy I was there for a minute, started to tell you the tale of another obstacle overcome, but before I could celebrate...
How We Got Here
Often feel like a hamster on a spinning wheel, round and round and round you go and never seem to get anywhere. Then you realize, in the greater scope of life, this might be a good thing. At least you’re “On The Go” still. Active and trying.
Mom always said I was trying.
Sometimes I try to do more than I should. Blame it on my Mom, Dad, too. Both poor children of the Great Depression before fighting WWII. The Greatest Generation. I’m good with that honorific, my parents had receipts.
There’s an innate sense I am not doing “enough.” Should I be doing more? Of course, rarely did I ever apply this sense to something like studying. Or writing.
Last summer in the global warming of Central Florida, every day, I power-walked sixty to ninety minutes. The dog and I scampered from one shady spot to another. He scampered, I trudged.
The trudge feeling like a hard tempo run. And I felt like I should be doing more. Despite the ARTHRITIS.
Until mid-Autumn, when my right hip finally got just too freakin’ painful to keep going. I cut back to twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. Tried not to limp.
When I told them I was a decorated military veteran who loved his mother and went to church twice weekly, they promised to rush me right in. Two months later.
Good news is I don’t need a hip replacement. Orthopedist diagnosed an IT-BAND askew. That’s something new, atop the dormant sciatica and the ubiquitous arthritis. Only thing to do is send me to Rehab. Like Amy Winehouse.
Rehab Is Not For Sissies
Like to think I am always the healthiest-looking guy in the doctor’s waiting room.
First day, there’s an evaluation by one of those duplicitous-types you often find in Rehab, the maternal drill sergeant. Actually claiming to be the mother of twins, she tests my strength, my balance, my stability, my patience. She makes me do stuff I have never before done in my life. Get up and down from a low chair ten times, my aching back.
Which didn’t hurt when I got here.
There was more, but the results were what the results were.
The clinical diagnosis was not really a surprise. I am ‘weak-assed and unbalanced.’
Hardest part about Rehab? Not farting. You know those rubber mats gonna reverberate.
Original plan was to tell you all about the exercises, because what I learned IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS a successful old age is all about flexibility and balance.
Six weeks, another therapist – claims she is also the mother of twins – apparently did her undergrad work at Cirque du Soleil some of the moves she had me making.
A few sessions I was tanked to the gills on painkillers, just to see how much I could do and how far I could go. Other times, went pharmaceutically naked to be more acutely aware. Turns out PEDs work.
Imagine graduation. Evaluated to measure my progress, am told I originally performed, well, not so good. After weeks of Rehab, same tests show a 5%-7% improvement.
You remember that quote by Al Schweitzer? “One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.” So, I’m thinking I got this.
I FELL doing my stretching exercises. Don’t try ‘The Hurdler’ without a handhold, trust me.
Do the flexibility exercises in the morning. Once on the road, stop every ten to fifteen minutes to stretch, manage to walk almost pain-free. Couple months later, I can go over fifty minutes. Maybe forty minutes most days.
Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Victory is mine! Once again!!
Actually got out the Rehab Center’s business card to call the mothers of twins, tell them how great I’m doing.
Not so fast, geezer. SCIATICA. No longer dormant. Through the miracle of rehabilitation, managed to move the pain from the right hip to the left gluteus maximus. Or gluteus flatus, in my case.
My ass hurts whenever I cough.
Not a problem. Just a reversal. So, give it a rest and drop down to a twenty-minute walk. About the least I can abide; the dog and I both like to stay regular.
Worried worn shoes might be a factor, I put on a new pair of Nike Win-Flo 10s. Which seem sufficiently benign.
Twelve minutes later, felt like I got shot in the bottom of my left foot. Thinking .22LR.
PLANTAR FASCIITIS from the tip of my fused now bruised big toe to the top of my Achilles tendon. That’s the purple foot at the bottom of the bad leg on the weak side. Geez, like it all could be somehow connected maybe.
WARNING GRAPHIC PHOTO AHEAD CUIDADO GRAPHIC PHOTO AHEAD WARNING GRAPHIC
Plateau Or Ledge?
Two weeks later, the swelling in the foot has disappeared and we walked 43 minutes this morning without a problem. There will be no celebration.
Having discovered a new meaning for “foot strike,” I didn’t walk for a week. A lot of ice.
Renewed my pool pass. Spin bike moved into position; needs adjustment and dusting. Put the new Win-Flo 10s back in their box. Actually have a thirteen-year-old grandson who wears size thirteen.
After that perambulation-free week, I strolled around the yard. Gingerly. Next day, I got the mail. Then down to the bottom of the hill and back. Achilles real tender – more ice.
My weight ballooned, up three pounds. Will be cutting back on ice cream and cookies.
Truth be told, I must have been overdoing it for far too long. And I can cut back. On treats and mileage.
And more rest might be just the thing. Or ‘recovery.’ Dogs are famously adaptable and I feel optimistic. And slightly less achy.
Sure, I might have been pounding myself to a nub. Then I’d eat a pound of ice cream followed up by cookies. Maybe peanut butter. Thinking now it might be smarter to have a cup of pudding at night.
The Old Me On A New Plateau didn’t have a huge bowl of ice cream last night. Instead I ate a seventy-calorie tiny cup of chocolate pudding.
Followed up by six chocolate chip cookies and several table-spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter. Lost those three pounds already.
We don’t live life on a Bell Curve, but as a series of plateaus. A plateau is just a wider ledge. Length undetermined.
In youth, you are climbing plateaus like a parkour superstar.
Got pushed off couple of ledges, jumped once or twice and now here I am. Old. A spectacular denouement right there, if I’m being honest with you.
On a new plateau, if I must be honest with myself. What is afternoon napping, if not a cry for help?
That struggle last year, those pains, I was clawing and clinging. Slipping and sliding. Wasn’t a cliff I was falling off, so much as a slap upside the head. Routine Reversal Recovery Restart, surebut restart on a new level, the ringing said.
Rehab was the transition. Relegated, like a losing futbol team. On this plateau, I can see the future – it’s slow and hot, lot like Hell. And Florida.
Cannot yet see the edge from here. Can’t say I’m looking.
Must remember what those therapeutic mothers said. Watch where you are going, not your feet.
“Let us introduce you to your new plateau,” the therapists cajoled the healthiest-looking guy in Rehab.
Keep your head up.
“That’ll be $15 co-pay.”
Our happiness is built by attitude and intention. Attitude is not everything, but it’s almost everything. I visited the jazz great Jane Jarvis when she was old, crippled and living in a tiny apartment with a window facing a brick wall. I asked if she was happy and she replied, “I have everything I need to be happy right between my ears.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/12/opinion/sunday/women-older-happiness.html?
Rehab sent me a link. https://goconfluent.com/blog/strength-training-tips-for-beginners/
Confess I did get the barbells out, too.