An Exercise in Frustration

At the beginning of November, I learned that I’m old. Maybe I don’t need a walker yet, but I’m rapidly approaching the age where I could use a bar to stabilize myself while shaving my legs in the shower. My only hope is that my husband is approaching an age where he soon won’t care if my legs are shaved or not.

Anyway, thanks to my insistence that I’m perfectly capable of jumping on a trampoline at the advanced old age of 39, I’m now one of those amorphous back pain whiners. The injury occurred while we were on a Boy Scout field trip, reinforcing my opinion that supervising children is inherently dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. I pretend to be an engaged parent for one day and *poof* three months in traction.

This chronic pain crap isn’t fun. It seems just mere weeks ago I could run a couple of miles and do back walk-overs. Actually it was mere weeks ago. Four weeks to be precise, because even after the injury, I tried to tough it out and keep going.

Lots of people avoid physical activity, citing it as unpleasant and painful, but I find it much less unpleasant and painful than being home with my family. The finer aspects of my gym membership more than compensate for any inconvenience or bodily injury I incur. Exercise is a guaranteed excuse to leave my spawn with my spouse at any given moment. Instead of cooking dinner, bathing my kids, or reading yet another Barbie bedtime story, I can hang out with a group of relatively attractive men. Plus, the guys provide the proper motivation for me to exercise intensely, ensuring my sweat will camouflage any incontinence issues that might crop up. Usually this energy expenditure is beneficial - unless I’m doing front-handsprings with a herniated disk, which apparently is not against my better judgment.

When the Orthopedist told me to quit exercising, I almost cried. He was quite specific that I need to find other outlets for my energy, so my new pastimes include yelling at my spouse and physical therapy.

I’ve always viewed physical therapy as something of a joke. It’s somewhere people who don’t care enough to work hard at the gym go. But since I’ve spent the last three months steadily re-injuring myself, gaining weight, and losing sanity, I decided to grab any rope that might right my sinking ship. Plus, it is covered by my health insurance.

However, I’ve learned physical therapy is no joke. I didn’t know it was possible to work so hard and burn absolutely no calories. If you have nothing better to do, try to lie still on your back in a flat, quiet area and clinch your multifidus muscle for 30 seconds without tensing any other part of your body. Never heard of that muscle? I hadn’t either, although it is the supposed key to my success with this program. It’s about as easy as looking in a mirror and trying to wiggle my ear.

I’ve spent an incalculable amount of time this week lying on my back and shushing my children as I attempt to contract a pretend muscle. There’s no measure of success. Half the time I can’t tell if I’m meditating, sleeping, or clenching because it takes me so long to isolate it. I promptly report that I’m doing my exercises at every appointment, but the truth is I might just be napping. I’m not sure I can tell the difference.

This dashboard for success makes me question the physical therapy profession as a whole. I wonder if my therapists are high-fiving each other in the break room, making up words that sound like body parts no one has ever heard of. If I can’t master the skill, I have to keep coming back until I do. They get to keep sending bills. They did their job. I’m destined to failure because I’m too stupid to work my multifidus. But that’s okay. I'm used to being a failure and it’s worth every penny to have an medical excuse to take a nap.