For a person who despises exercise, I sure do spend a lot of time doing it these days. Leg lifts, quad sets, wrist twists and turns, weight lifting, leg squeezes, stretching exercises and lounges. Thirty of each and repeat three times a day.
I know I need to do the exercises if I ever expect to leave the wheelchair and walker behind. But, still, I protest, for at least 20 minutes every single time before I get started. An hour and a half later, after I finish all the exercises, I collapse into a huge sigh of relief and just sit, recuperating for another 15 or 20 minutes of astonished gasping “Phew! I did it.” Multiple those couple hours times three, add in a healing nap once or twice a day, fixing meals and the days just fly by. And, people used to ask me what I would do when I retired.
I used to have a job, now I have a gym routine that consumes hours of every day of the week. All this because I missed one step, fell forward onto the landing, split my left leg’s tibia and broke my left wrist all in less time than it took to write all that. I am in my third month of recuperation and anticipate at least as many months ahead of me. Yes, that long sigh you just heard came from me. I do that a lot of that these days … sighing. I look at the list of exercises and sigh. I argue with myself about the importance of doing them early in the morning, in the afternoon and before I go to bed. I lose the fight every time and I sigh at my defeat.
I keep my leg weight and exercise bands on the headboard bookshelf so I can stay in bed and exercise. In the dawn of the day I pretend I am just like my husband who sleeps soundly while I do leg lifts and tighten the muscles around my knee 100 times.
Yes, I said 100. And then I sigh, strap on an ankle weight and begin leg lifts and knee bending. Later, I sigh while my husband bends my leg until it pulls uncomfortably (translation: it hurts). I live with the sigh of resignation that I must do all this to walk freely again.
Exercising began at my dear daughter’s house. She admonished me to not just lay there, but to keep moving. To keep her happy, I waved my right arm and leg around whenever she put in her daily exercise video. Those movements sufficed those first couple weeks as I internally cautioned everyone, “No quick movements. Be careful. I am breakable.” Physical therapists don’t care about all that. They emphasize, they expect, they demand movement. I came home from the last hospital stay with a half hour routine of wheelchair exercises to do once a day. I thought I did pretty good working my way through them until I graduated from rehab therapy to recuperative therapy.
With a warm smile on their faces and determination to get me back up on my feet, the physical therapists add new exercises regularly during my three weekly visits. I began with a half a dozen exercises. The next time a couple more were added with the admonition to repeat each 30 times during three sessions a day. All that exercise cuts into my book reading time. I must have books. I discovered audio books on YouTube. Now I ‘read’ and exercise at the same time.
Even my last physical therapy session added yet another couple techniques to use to restore my former freedom of movements. Okay, so it will only take five minutes to do each one. Those little pieces of my time: five minutes here and there are like breaking a Hershey bar into the little squares to eat one tiny bit of chocolate at a time. By the end of the day when all the chocolate pieces are gone, I still have eaten a whole candy bar.
With the bits and pieces of exercises to do through the day, I tally up more than five hours of gym at home and I still must not let the left foot touch the ground and carry the body.
The leg, the knee and the ankle exercise a lot. The foot waits high and dry for the doctor’s approval. Meanwhile the left wrist has escaped cast, brace and that initial stiffness to once again contribute to the daily activities including leg strengthening exercises. It will soon graduate from therapy with a cap, gown and a diploma admonishing it to remember to be more careful in the future — I am breakable and I really do not want to do all this again, ever.
Joan Hershberger is a former staff member of the El Dorado News-Times.