![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/leg3.jpg\" "\\"leg\\"")
\nThe First Day of the Rest of My Life started yesterday. I got done with the morning rant- why aren\u2019t those bankers and financiers in jail?- and looked up at the clock. I realized I had 31 minutes to be in a place I had never been before.<\/p>\n
Crap. Double crap.<\/p>\n
Every movement takes extra time, and my internal Washington Commuter Clock just doesn\u2019t work properly to incorporate the brace and the tentative steps. Attempting to \u201churry\u201d takes on a certain air of the surreal, but after tottering down the hall to the elevator I got to the lobby, greeting Rhonda the Chief Concierge and Leo the Engineer, as I hobbled with earnest intent across the marble and out the front door.<\/p>\n
Then I was in the Bluesmobile and headed west. After some interminable traffic lights on Route 50 and one wrong turn, I found the office complex whose address I had scrawled on a piece of scrap paper.<\/p>\n
This would have been easier, of course, by punching the address into the Crackberry navigator app, but of course the Company had zeroed my device in a security update, and nothing worked. Crap.<\/p>\n
I did blunder across the building almost by chance, and found a parking slot almost large enough for the massive Ford was filling out insurance paperwork in the office upstairs with a minute and thirty seconds to spare.<\/p>\n
I am getting too old for this getting old business, I thought.<\/p>\n
The office was an alcove off a large sunny room with various devices of torture and a middle-aged man who was walking slowly around an obstacle course of small orange cones.<\/p>\n
I was handed a sheaf of papers to fill out and riffled through them. Once the physical therapy people were confident that they could bill me, I was turned over to a curvaceous young woman named Christina.<\/p>\n
She had long blonde hair, a statuesque bodice and a diamond on her left hand. She summoned me to a work station next to a massage table in the middle of the room and changed my life.<\/p>\n
No kidding. Up until the moment I took the brace off, I was an invalid and afraid of falling like a codger. Christina changed all that. She took me in hand (or foot as the case may be) and put me through my paces. It was quite extraordinary- I left the house an invalid, and within ten minutes at rehab I was being challenged to be healthy again.\u00a0 It was almost too much to absorb, like the earth had lurched. I totally had to recalibrate the person I had become and imagine a new one.<\/p>\n
Forty-five minutes later I was bathed in a sheen of sweat. Christina printed out two pages of diagrams for the exercises I am supposed to go twice daily. There are twelve exercises to strengthen the knee and leg structures and set up a two-a-week office schedule with the admonition to do the exercises morning and night.<\/p>\n
I was amazed at what I could do without the brace, but I had to remember that it was the fear that needed to go first. \u201cDon\u2019t push it too hard,\u201d she said. \u201cBut push it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got a real adrenaline rush out of the session, one that carried me through a business lunch and back to the computer at home. There, the adrenaline leaked out and I started to get back spasms, intermittent dizzy spells, a series of mini-panic attacks and gnawing pain that radiated from knee to the small of my back.<\/p>\n
I gave up around five, I thought some Motrin might be good, then said, “Screw it,” and found the plastic prescription bottle of Percocet, happy that I quit taking them after the operation and still had a stash left. I took one, mixed a drink and got in bed. In a half hour everything was fine. I am glad I didn’t finish them weeks ago.<\/p>\n
This is going to be interesting, and one thing for sure is that it is going to be different.<\/p>\n
Sorry this is disjointed- they are going to power wash the garage and I have to move the Mercedes and think about how I am going to look like I am working today. Still amazed. What a difference a day makes.<\/p>\n
Jeeze, Louise. Now the work starts.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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