Me and My Great Big Melon...

I had another physical therapy session today. Got the e-stim and heat. Finally got to work with Doug. He had me do this "range of motion test." It's pretty simple. You can go ahead and try it at home. Stand up straight. Look as far as you can to the left...good. Now look as far as you can to the right...Oh, yeah, that's not good.

"What's not good?" I asked.

I couldn't tell because I just turned my head till it stopped. It felt normal to me. But apparently, I can turn my neck way farther to the left than to the right.

He started pushing around asking, "Does that hurt?" I kept saying that it didn't. I wasn't trying to be a tough guy or anything, it just didn't hurt. Then he starts pushing harder and said, "I can't beleive that doesn't hurt. Let's get you on...The MaChInE!!! ha ha ha" or something like that. Doug is funny. And I don't at all want to imply that he is anything less than a true professional. He knows what he's doing, he was just having fun with me because, well, I'm easy to have fun with (translation - it's easy to make fun of me). Marilyn (my pal from the voter registration table) works there had my X-ray results and they were looking them over together and she asked why I needed the machine. "Well, he's got something going on in there, and he's so meaty I can't get to it."

Meaty. I'm not fat, and I'm not big boned. I'm meaty.

So the treatment today was traction therapy. I always thought traction was when you are in the hospital in a body cast tied up to the ceiling like a marionette. But there is also this crazy machine.

He had me lay on my back with my head between two posts on this weird beige 70's styled medical equipment contraption device. I don't know how else to describe it because it looks like nothing I've ever seen before. It looked sort of like this, but this picture is a much newer model.



Maybe I'll take my camera to my last session. Anyway, he straps my head in to this thing and hands me a handle with a big red button on it. "What's this for?" "To turn the machine off if you need to."

So I was a little nervous. Anyway, he starts adjusting some settings and asking me if it hurts. "Can you feel that?" And again, I couldn't feel much. He said, "Jeez, you've really got a big head. You've got like a tweny pounder." I said, "Oh, you have no idea," and told him about my last visit to LensCrafters. The girl who took my measurements for my frames looked at the meter and exclaimed, "Wow! that's the biggest reading I've ever had."

Anyway - back to this story. I laid on this machine as it went through it's 15 or so minute cycle of contortions. I had the strangest feelings. It was like pain memory. Like little warm ripples all over the spots that used to hurt when I was really bad off. I couldn't turn my head much, but I could move it a little to the right and left. When I moved it to the right, nothing, but when I moved it to the right it was "pop" like someone cracked their knuckle inside my head. not just once - repeatedly. Then I got these weird little crackling fireworks down my neck in to the top of my spine.

Then it was over. The last thing they did was to teach me "cross friction" massage on myself. I have to work my fingers in to the tendons on the front of my shoulder and rub them. They pop one over the other over and over.

I am going to be sore tomorrow, I can feel it coming on already. But it is progress. And I am almost able to put in a full day of work now.