Put to the Test
Dan is my physiotherapist. That is his job. I am his patient. That is mine. And somewhere along the road we gave a both jobs and decided to be at least unofficial, friends. Which confuses me slightly. He is so glad to see me after a two-year absence, that I don't quite know what to do. His physiotherapy gym is humming, and his effusive welcome is witnessed by a guy who is selling me a wheelchair. We are gathered here today for the purpose of fitting my aging body into a new vehicle.
The last time I visited Dan, Marlou was with me. Exercise, her oncologist said, was part of the treatment. A little chemotherapy, a little exercise, a little less cancer maybe. Marlou was not terribly keen on physical activity. Dan worked out a whole program for her. But I have watched him for many years out of the corner of my eye. And he was watching Marlou out of the corner of his. He has been in the physical medicine business too long to worry about whether anyone listens to his advice. Marlou liked him. She listened to what Dan had to say and promptly ignored every word. Which may have been perfectly wise. Thinking that exercise can do anything about cancer is like hoping your bucket-brigade skills will come in handy when the dam breaks.
I get out of the wheelchair and perch at the edge of Dan's therapy table. Like all great artists, it's hard to keep Dan away from his medium. That is to say, me. The focus couldn't be clearer or narrower. My butt and my side. My torso has a way of tilting, as do my hips. The interplay of these flexible orthopedic systems is surprisingly complicated, to hear Dan and the wheelchair guy describe it. They can tilt the cushion one way to make my hips rise, but that might knock my rib cage too much the other. What if there's one torso support on the upper right, another on the lower left, and the cushion bulges in back and recedes in front? The footrests. What about the footrests? Where are his feet going to be when his butt is over here, his torso over there, and all of California slides south with continental drift? Where?
While this debate rages, I feel I should tell Dan that my wife has died. I'm not sure why. It just seems part of the story, and by now we know our stories well enough to exchange these details. So I tell him, apropos of nothing. Oh, he acknowledges lightly. I suspect Dan already knows this. He tells me his wife, also a physiotherapist, has had a cancerous cyst close to her spinal cord...and now shows a much milder version of my symptoms. Oh, I say just as lightly. The mortality beat goes on.
Dan is pressed for time. This seems to be a hallmark of American medicine, part of the atmospherics of efficiency the system somehow achieves, without results. System be damned, Dan seems to be saying. Whatever his schedule, he has gotten lost in the neuromuscular wonderland that is my body. Move your scapulae down and together, he urges. I give this a try. Touch your right shoulder to the ground, Dan instructs. I shrug, the end-product of enormous outpourings of motor neurons. Point your right finger at your left hip. At this, I only sigh. I would give Dan the finger, all right, if I could. We both know this is a pro forma request, my upper right extremity being a neurological ghost town. Sit up as straight as you can. Another joke. This time, Dan and the wheelchair guy linger over the punchline. It's not a true scoliosis, they agree. It's...some other word, already passing in one ear and out the other. I don't care. What's surprising, is that I don't mind. At least not as much as I used to.
Muscle tests, and that's what Dan is doing, used to depress me utterly. They represent a full inventory of what is wrong with my body. A part by part, piece by piece, dissection of what doesn't move. It's the full disaster laid bare, parts labeled, signs pointing from one disaster area to the other. The Full Neuromuscular Monty. What I'd like to know is how Dan stays in shape. He must work out himself. We are more or less the same age, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep the strength up and the weight down. Possibly, Dan's solution lies in hard work and ceaseless activity. This muscle test he has just concluded takes, at minimum, an hour. He has crammed the sucker into 45 minutes. And Dan is not even out of breath.
I'm really pleased with the rotator cuff, he observes to no one in particular. My shoulder is part of Dan's handiwork. The wheelchair guy wants to know what and how Dan achieved such things with my tendons. To my surprise, Dan goes into great detail. He shifts my shoulder up and down like a medical school dummy, explaining how the tendon used to get pinched. Before I got to work yanking on elastic bands. I give Dan full credit for this. What started as a disastrous shoulder ache 12 years ago, petered out. In the end, there was nothing but occasional mild pain. The latter totally alleviated by the systematic pulling of these elastic bits.
When it's over, I exit totally exhausted. No, it's not as draining as the physiotherapy sessions of my youth. It used to be that every year's muscle test showed a steady decline, despite exercise, regular stretching and hope. Sad to face things going downhill. As though they were not going downhill for everyone else. Which, intellectually, I knew to be the case. But did not much care. By now I do not much care about the actual tests. Anymore than Marlou cares about her SAT scores.
The isolation of body parts reaches a new level after nightfall. This takes the form of Strauss' Salomé, on display at the San Francisco Opera. A friend had prepared me for some heavy going. Read my e-mail after you see it, she advised. It is, at least partly, a mess, she judged. Because it's an opera, a level of mess almost always exists. So what's to worry? I was prepared for one important aspect: no intermission. The thing cranks up and rolls along without interval. Fair warning for the bladder compromised. What the hell.
Who was John the Baptist? Mentally, reading the program's synopsis, I'm trying to get a handle on the characters and the plot. The house lights dim before I can make much progress, but if John was a Baptist, Bill a Presbyterian and Lewis a Rastafarian, and they ask the bartender for the same scotch.... Too late. The curtain is up, and why, no one can tell, since the cast all stand about waiting for the conductor to enter.
Things unfold. Why John is a Baptist is never revealed. There are some Jews, however, who stand about tugging on their phylacteries and engaging in pointless speculation about Elijah. Time passes. Salomé wants a little head. This used to be the stuff of naughty jokes. But Salomé wants the one currently attached to John's neck. She gets it, for reasons that are also not clear. She also goes to unmotivated lengths to fondle the head once detached. There is some rather splendid music in between. Surely not much of Oscar Wilde's famous one-act remains intact here. At least, that's my guess. I'll have to give it a read. Otherwise, there is simply no explaining this two-hour paean to morbid fear of female sexuality. I think I enjoyed the muscle test more. It's a relief to drive home.
The last time I visited Dan, Marlou was with me. Exercise, her oncologist said, was part of the treatment. A little chemotherapy, a little exercise, a little less cancer maybe. Marlou was not terribly keen on physical activity. Dan worked out a whole program for her. But I have watched him for many years out of the corner of my eye. And he was watching Marlou out of the corner of his. He has been in the physical medicine business too long to worry about whether anyone listens to his advice. Marlou liked him. She listened to what Dan had to say and promptly ignored every word. Which may have been perfectly wise. Thinking that exercise can do anything about cancer is like hoping your bucket-brigade skills will come in handy when the dam breaks.
I get out of the wheelchair and perch at the edge of Dan's therapy table. Like all great artists, it's hard to keep Dan away from his medium. That is to say, me. The focus couldn't be clearer or narrower. My butt and my side. My torso has a way of tilting, as do my hips. The interplay of these flexible orthopedic systems is surprisingly complicated, to hear Dan and the wheelchair guy describe it. They can tilt the cushion one way to make my hips rise, but that might knock my rib cage too much the other. What if there's one torso support on the upper right, another on the lower left, and the cushion bulges in back and recedes in front? The footrests. What about the footrests? Where are his feet going to be when his butt is over here, his torso over there, and all of California slides south with continental drift? Where?
While this debate rages, I feel I should tell Dan that my wife has died. I'm not sure why. It just seems part of the story, and by now we know our stories well enough to exchange these details. So I tell him, apropos of nothing. Oh, he acknowledges lightly. I suspect Dan already knows this. He tells me his wife, also a physiotherapist, has had a cancerous cyst close to her spinal cord...and now shows a much milder version of my symptoms. Oh, I say just as lightly. The mortality beat goes on.
Dan is pressed for time. This seems to be a hallmark of American medicine, part of the atmospherics of efficiency the system somehow achieves, without results. System be damned, Dan seems to be saying. Whatever his schedule, he has gotten lost in the neuromuscular wonderland that is my body. Move your scapulae down and together, he urges. I give this a try. Touch your right shoulder to the ground, Dan instructs. I shrug, the end-product of enormous outpourings of motor neurons. Point your right finger at your left hip. At this, I only sigh. I would give Dan the finger, all right, if I could. We both know this is a pro forma request, my upper right extremity being a neurological ghost town. Sit up as straight as you can. Another joke. This time, Dan and the wheelchair guy linger over the punchline. It's not a true scoliosis, they agree. It's...some other word, already passing in one ear and out the other. I don't care. What's surprising, is that I don't mind. At least not as much as I used to.
Muscle tests, and that's what Dan is doing, used to depress me utterly. They represent a full inventory of what is wrong with my body. A part by part, piece by piece, dissection of what doesn't move. It's the full disaster laid bare, parts labeled, signs pointing from one disaster area to the other. The Full Neuromuscular Monty. What I'd like to know is how Dan stays in shape. He must work out himself. We are more or less the same age, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep the strength up and the weight down. Possibly, Dan's solution lies in hard work and ceaseless activity. This muscle test he has just concluded takes, at minimum, an hour. He has crammed the sucker into 45 minutes. And Dan is not even out of breath.
I'm really pleased with the rotator cuff, he observes to no one in particular. My shoulder is part of Dan's handiwork. The wheelchair guy wants to know what and how Dan achieved such things with my tendons. To my surprise, Dan goes into great detail. He shifts my shoulder up and down like a medical school dummy, explaining how the tendon used to get pinched. Before I got to work yanking on elastic bands. I give Dan full credit for this. What started as a disastrous shoulder ache 12 years ago, petered out. In the end, there was nothing but occasional mild pain. The latter totally alleviated by the systematic pulling of these elastic bits.
When it's over, I exit totally exhausted. No, it's not as draining as the physiotherapy sessions of my youth. It used to be that every year's muscle test showed a steady decline, despite exercise, regular stretching and hope. Sad to face things going downhill. As though they were not going downhill for everyone else. Which, intellectually, I knew to be the case. But did not much care. By now I do not much care about the actual tests. Anymore than Marlou cares about her SAT scores.
The isolation of body parts reaches a new level after nightfall. This takes the form of Strauss' Salomé, on display at the San Francisco Opera. A friend had prepared me for some heavy going. Read my e-mail after you see it, she advised. It is, at least partly, a mess, she judged. Because it's an opera, a level of mess almost always exists. So what's to worry? I was prepared for one important aspect: no intermission. The thing cranks up and rolls along without interval. Fair warning for the bladder compromised. What the hell.
Who was John the Baptist? Mentally, reading the program's synopsis, I'm trying to get a handle on the characters and the plot. The house lights dim before I can make much progress, but if John was a Baptist, Bill a Presbyterian and Lewis a Rastafarian, and they ask the bartender for the same scotch.... Too late. The curtain is up, and why, no one can tell, since the cast all stand about waiting for the conductor to enter.
Things unfold. Why John is a Baptist is never revealed. There are some Jews, however, who stand about tugging on their phylacteries and engaging in pointless speculation about Elijah. Time passes. Salomé wants a little head. This used to be the stuff of naughty jokes. But Salomé wants the one currently attached to John's neck. She gets it, for reasons that are also not clear. She also goes to unmotivated lengths to fondle the head once detached. There is some rather splendid music in between. Surely not much of Oscar Wilde's famous one-act remains intact here. At least, that's my guess. I'll have to give it a read. Otherwise, there is simply no explaining this two-hour paean to morbid fear of female sexuality. I think I enjoyed the muscle test more. It's a relief to drive home.
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