Dr. O’s diagnosis, dated April 27, 2011:
Lumbosacral Spondylosis (ICD-7213)
Myofascial Pain (ICD-729.1)
Lumbar Disc Displacement, W/O Myelopathy (ICD-722.10)
Hamstring Strain
Precautions:
NO SIGNIFICANT MEDICAL PROBLEMS
Prescription:
Modalities, Massage, TENS unit, Ultrasound Electrical Stimulation, Gait and Balance Evaluation and training, Stretching and strengthening of L/S paraspinal and abdominal muscles. Stretching and strengthening of lower extremities muscles, ROM of L/S spine and lower extremities joints, Lumbar Spine stabilization exercises, Theraband exercises for strengthening of rotator cuff muscles, proper posturing and body ergonomics training. Teach home exercise program.
And here, silly me, I thought Dr. O was going to launch into a praise-Larry soliloquy, drawing attention to my hard work since the injury, exactly one month ago today (April 28), and that sure I should, could continue to follow the able advice of my physical therapists not computer-tap a jargon-filled prescription to be filled by whom? A physical therapist who will have me doing body realignment and – gasp! – suggesting yoga for full-body health and renewal or face what Dr. O called not once but twice the “dangerous” consequences of following the path that I’m currently on, so I ask myself the question as Dr. O’s prescription includes, NO SIGNIFICANT MEDICAL PROBLEMS, shouldn’t I just take this prescription and put it a little too close to a flame and watch it burn to ash, and go about strengthening on my own terms because, baby, I got to this season not by listening to doctors, or at least that’s what I tell myself, and if there’s one thing to come out of my session with Dr. O it’s that she convinced me that whether I start the blog, “Knowing Water,” or not that I continue this summer with the plan of getting into Water – Rat We – relaxing, let it lift me up and turn a weakness into a strength.
When I was a boy I was buried up to my neck in the backyard of my uncle’s cottage. In those days the sand as I remember it was like the Sahara, in color and texture, feet sinking in to the ankles and for hours on summer weekends my brother, sister and scads of cousins and I would play, diving in a sand-spray at badminton, shaping forts for war games, or digging down as far as we could, visions of China on the other side of the world, so it was the most natural desire for me to want to be buried to my neck in sand, indeed I implored my dad to do it and he complied, planting his first-born son with the strange passions like a farm chore and then leaving, in my memory to the rolling waves of Lake Huron for a swim but likely as not a place at the table in the cottage, thick with cigarette smoke, a dart game going, once seeing Uncle B – pretty much all my uncles and aunts gone except Mom and Uncle M, her second-oldest brother, Momma next year will be eighty! – throwing to my amazed eye three consecutive triple-twenties, Ka-Chunk, Ka-Chunk, Ka-Chunk, Uncle B and Dad diving headfirst in the sand to retrieve the birdie in badminton, a crowd gathers to watch the battle to the finish, Gordie Howe versus Bobby Hull, Hockey! Hockey! Hockey! Hockey! Dad playing cards, Bug Your Neighbor, rules a blur to me now, dollar bills and quarters on the table, snub-nose beer bottles and highball glasses with scantily clad silos of attractive women on the side, written sayings (Champagne makes you see double and feel simple) up and down the side, mostly Canadian Club and Coke, Dad, though, only pop, a glass of flat cola, all a poor second to the game, the prospect of winning at all costs save cheating, never exercise an unfair advantage, the room loud with shouts and laughs, my grandfather, Mom’s Dad, the center of the goings-on, he’ll die when I’m eighteen and the cottage bacchanal dies too, but this day it’s going strong when my little cousin Bruce, a toddler, squirts out of the smoky den through the rap-rapping screen door and blinks once, twice as he sees me in the sand, my head drooped forward, dead to the world, all color out of my face, heartbeat dialed down to hibernation but I’m not a bear or a squirrel but a little boy whose breathing has slowed so packed with sand it is around my sides that my ribcage can’t expand as it should and yes, thank God, Bruce doesn’t just go about his business, after all he’s only three but rather returns inside and alerts the grownups to what he’s seen and next thing I know my arms are nearly being pulled out of their sockets as my Uncle B tries to lift me out of the sand hole like I’m a stubborn horseshoe peg, thinks better of it and with others start digging furiously with their hands and fingers so many grownups on all fours, or so I was told because I was out and didn’t recover until later on a pullout couch off the games room, Father sitting with me for awhile, seeing that I’m okay, watching for me to sit up on my own before he goes to resume his place in the game, his cards tight to his chest like a derringer.
That’s about non-swimming, right? A near-drowning experience in a sand hole in the ground in bluewater country, my homeland a paradise of swimming holes at the base of the Mill Dam in Owen Sound, Ontario, a weedy but blissfully calm Kelso Beach in Georgian Bay, countless creeks, and streams and rivers, a community pool in the Scenic City’s Harrison Park, all around is water and pals who learned to swim, no easy excuse that I grew up in urban squalor, say, the pool a place of switchblades, drugs and childhood cruelty, rather, in Owen Sound, it’s more American Dream than America, more Norman Rockwell, or better yet, Sam Clemens and Tom Blankenship, think Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn http://bit.ly/i1YEja, a non-swimmer in this scenario as ostracized as a platypus in a fox den, and how else can I come to terms with this than to purge it in this way, through confession and knowledge, what will come from finding my center of buoyancy in a dead man’s float?
Next: Running for Your Life: Finally, Setting Goals
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