So yesterday I got to go to a physiotherapist. This is all-new for me, being that I’m normally pretty well put-together, but since the Wreck of the Hesperus a few weeks ago, I’ve been having some random issues with muscle spasms and, most annoying of all, headaches. So the doctor gave up on me and sent me to physical therapy.
I show up in my work clothes, because I don’t know any better. Apparently you’re supposed to wear loose, comfortable clothing. I was there in a blouse, a sweater, a lace skirt and four-inch heels. Hm.
When I walk in, I’m immediately greeted by a youngish woman who gives me the standard sheaf of paperwork to fill out. I sit in the nice waiting area and start dutifully filling out my entire medical history. I’m dimly aware of music in the background, which is filtering out to the waiting room from the therapy floor, which I can see from my chair.
Lots of tables, weights, an indoor pool, and several young men looking purposeful are in the therapy room, along with the standard smattering of patients that make me feel like a giant f*cking hypochondriac. These people have broken limbs and walkers and sh!t; I have a f*cking headache.
So anyway. It takes me a minute to place the music, which is really familiar, some kind of rock song from the 80s or 90s? And then I hear the chorus and I audibly snort, seriously loud, loud enough that the receptionist looks up at me as I try to snarf quietly through hysterical giggles.
What kind of omen is it when your physiotherapist’s office is playing “Fat-Bottomed Girls” over their sound system?
After a while, I’m retrieved by a deeply-soulful young man who introduces himself as Brady. Brady is younger than me by at least ten years and has perfect, earnest features and puppy eyes that are so immediately concerned for me that I feel even more like a fraud. He sits me down on a table and is all, “Let’s dialogue” and I have to tell him all my symptoms. And then he gets ALL UP CLOSE TO ME like the eye doctor does and puts his hands on my neck to sort of gently manipulate it, and I’m like, “Holy sh!t, Junior, not even my gyno gets this close,” and then I’m distracted because he’s asking questions again and I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to say. Like, I’m concerned my answers are going to be wrong somehow or something, which is the dumbest fear ever, but like I said, I was already feeling like an assh*le for being there anyway.
So after some more deeply-unsettling close-massaging, Brady puts some electrodes on my neck and back and a heating pad on me and cranks that sucker up and man, it feels kind of awesome. And then he leaves me alone for fifteen minutes which is the BEST thing ever, because I am really not a good physiotherapy patient. At all. Deeply-soulful Brady would be excellent if I was in my late 70s and only had a cat. As it is, it’s just a wee disturbing and inappropriate.
After the electrodes thing, the visit is over. And Brady assures me that yes, I really am legitimately f*cked up, and I need to come back twice more this week and a few times next week, and we’ll go from there.
Which is really a double-edged sword. Happy that this is something fixable, happy I apparently “passed,” but dude. Five more close-staring sessions with Brady? Seriously? …..Maybe I could just take some Advil?
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