Physical Therapy Might Actually Work This Time…

“This is crazy, man.”

 

I swing my leg back and forth off of the table.  I’ve just had an electrical shock machine taken off of my leg.  It’s been connected to the gimpy leg for about fifteen minutes, sending a sustained shock through the muscle for ten seconds at a time in thirty-second intervals.  The physical therapist gives me one hell of a confused look as I look at my leg, poke it a couple of times, swing it once more.  She’d already given me a strange look when I’d revealed that yes, the electrical shock stimulation to the leg felt pretty damn good.  The look she gives me when I repeat that yes, this in fact has totally fricken killed the pain is just plain bewilderment—

But it’s totally true.  After ten minutes of that strange buzzy machine, my leg feels…not just normal.  My leg feels…good.  In fact my leg feels so good I want to run around on it and shoot a few baskets.

---

 

“I just wish you could put this stuff in a bottle.  It’s gotta be better than five and six aspirin a day.  And the Voltaren only barely works now, and when it does it leaves me feeling so damned stoned it’s not so good.”

 

Apparently, there’s a unit that you can get for personal use—a TENS device—that does the same thing as that big, buzzy beast that they use in the physical therapist’s office.  I’m going to have to make my case, because the amount of painkiller (and yes, occasionally alcohol) that it takes to dull my leg pain is, to put it bluntly, not healthy.  But this thing—well, after a round of exercises that sent me into searing pain, this thing just sort of…erased it.

Now if only I didn’t have this weird high from taking three Excedrin at a time, I’d be 100% today.