TRANSCUTANEOUSLY YOURS

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-05-23)

 

     I bet if you asked any of my doctors what my real problem is, they would say that as a patient I don't have any patience. To illustrate, I might be watching the news magazine "Sunday Morning," where in order to create a relaxing experience for the viewer, they might air a shot of an icicle slowly melting, dripping away for about five minutes. Because I'm so impatient I would try to reach through the screen with a blow dryer and speed things up. Or, if I won tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert and I am SO EXCITED throughout the first four hours of the show, the next two hours I start to get restless as darkness on the edge of town starts to turn to light.

     Anyway, I just want my doctors to cure me faster. I want a doctor whose motto is, "If I can't deliver your baby in 30 minutes it's FREE!" I would take a magic elixir to restore my health, as long as it doesn't contain gluten or lactose. But it's time that heals all wounds, and who has time for that? The doctors aren't in any hurry to find a substitute for time; as my health insurance continues to put their children through college, they continue to tell what to do to cure my latest afflictions, which is: nothing.

     Right now I'm in physical therapy for a broken 5th metatarsal bone in my foot, and I could just kick myself for breaking it in the first place, but I'll need to do it with one of my other 4 metatarsals. The therapist has me lie down on the table and assumme a position with one of my feet under me, raising my body with the other foot outstretched. The sort of position you should make no assumptions about if you find somebody in.

     Then he spreads out a bunch of marbles on the floor and directs me to pick them up one at a time with my toes and place them in a teacup. I'm distracted by the idea that this is going to result in a weird cup of tea, and the marbles go skittering across the floor. In an ironic twist, I've lost somebody else's marbles.

     The physical therapy office is a good example of a place where I can injure a different part of my body while treating the part I'm trying to cure. I'm told to stand balanced on my bad foot for 30 seconds. The waving of my arms and leg like a drunken semaphore operator trying to land a plane was something I added myself, and I still almost fell into a mirror that they have perfectly positioned so that you can see the face you make when you're about to crash into a mirror. It feels like a DWI field test, and I may be spending the evening in jail.

     The guy next to me is groaning, but that could be from my jokes. The therapist disappears into the back and I whisper to the guy, "PSST!" He looks alarmed that I might have sprung an air leak. "We've got to get the hell out of here- I think we're about to get water-boarded." The physical therapist returns and starts massaging my foot in the exact area where an orthopedic surgeon has inserted a large screw. In between my screams he glibly says, "No pain, no gain" "That explains my weight," I say. He keeps working on my foot, unfazed. I yell, "ALL RIGHT, I'LL TALK!" But he says, "Talk? We were hoping you'd zip it for a few precious moments. Are you experiencing any pain right now? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is it?" He's trying for a perfect 10 score like in the Olympics.

     "Be right back," he says, and I turn to the guy with the bad shoulder. I say, "This is how it's gonna go down: you create a diversion, and I'll make a run for it." "What about me?" "You're right. We'll need two diverse diversions, and the therapist can make a run for it." The guy says, "Listen, I saw an episode of MacGyver where he escapes on a cart he makes out of a battery, rubber bands, a blender, and half of a suit of armor." "Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Do you have a battery?" "No." Rubber bands?" "No." "A blender?" "No." "What about the suit of armor?" "I have that."

     The therapist comes back and says, "Time for a little transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation." And before I have a chance to look up "transcutaneous" he has me hooked up to something that looks like an EKG, only it's pulsing electrical charges into my body. I say, "Are you going to charge me extra for charging me extra?" He turns it up to "tase," and after a 15 minutes says, "Okay, you're done." I would have settled for medium rare 10 minutes ago.