March 27, 2011

• Better

     I am experiencing less pain. Physical Therapy continues. I am once more a member of the only local gym that has a swimming pool and going there to walk in the water. I have been reluctant to pull myself out of the house and my habit to make the trek to the pool. After I've gone, I feel strange, trance-like from walking the laps, counting the steps. I was walking, watching the mirror water reflect the painted blue ceiling, the trees from outdoors on the hill superimposed on the blue. I feel so light when I am in the water. I tried a little swimming the first day and it felt good, but my back was protesting in that prone position. I switched to a back stroke where there was more comfort to be had. Yesterday, I did not swim, only walked the laps alternating with side lunges the length of the pool. 

     My legs are not as strong as I would like them to be. I have not pushed through the pain of the last several months to keep myself strong. I have stayed in positions least likely to aggravate the pain only to be reminded that movement makes the pain feel better once I get through the initial discomfort. I do not move enough, that is a truth that  I have created for myself. In PT I am once again on the elliptical. My legs complain at the burden of my 259 pounds being borne on them. I increased from five minutes on Thursday to six minutes on Friday. The elliptical is boring at PT.  There is nothing to distract the evil whisperings of my mind. "Too hard, too heavy!" the fickle mind protests. "Too boring! Too hard! Too heavy!"  This despite the loss of thirty pounds. I find myself wondering how much worse it would be if I had not shed those thirty pounds. I find myself thinking that cane augmented ambulation would not be enough. I would be one of those overweight soulds who walks with wheeled walker with a bench.  While a nice invention for those who need it, I am not at all wanting to be the proud owner of such an assistive devise. Yet if I do not get my ass in gear, it will be one of those or worse, a wheel chair. I do not want these. Not at fifty two. 

     Is it wrong that one of the carrots I wave in front of my mulish face is the thought of playing with any grandchildren who might one day come my way?  As I side lunge my way the pool's length and back, I think about moving with a young child, playing some tag, some hide and seek. I imagine I am an active Oma. And while my imagining is not meant to coerce my children and their mates to provide me with the little ones in my dream, it is a way to remind myself to be prepared, to make ready so that I can participate in whatever might be offered to me in the way of another generation. So I will go to the gym, I will walk in the water, i will do the boring elliptical, I will get back on my recumbent bike and move into a future with them. Some days it is easier to take care of myself with the idea of them rather than for my own good.

  Blessings abound.

  • 9:17 pm
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