I was thinking that my body would feel better by Thursday. I had physical therapy on Thursday and that gave me two days to recover from my excitement from Monday. I could feel my body gradually starting to relax Wednesday evening. I was hopeful for Thursday and feeling back to normal aside from the pain in my knee that is slowly getting better… and then it rained!
Having had MS for so long, I finally have recognized that the rain truly affects me! It rained all morning as I got ready to go to ATI. I moved my appointment up in the day to 2:30. As I got out of the car in the ATI parking lot, that Alanis Morissette song, “Head over feet”, popped into my head!
What can I say?! I was 13 when that song came out and Alanis is fully ingrained in the soundtrack of my life! As soon as the door opened, I felt it! Except it wasn’t the “love [that] is thick and swallows me whole” but rather the air. It had stopped raining but it was very humid and I could not breathe in the air! My body still hurt!
I got onto the table at ATI and told Brad about the rain and humidity. He put me in traction first to kind of relax my body and it really worked! Then he worked on my calf and he told me he didn’t feel as tight as it did the time before. He eventually got my knee to bend and we got set up to lift my foot again.
As I started to attempt to lift my foot, it felt like someone was holding it down against the table. I remember feeling this way a couple of times at Barwis and it frustrated me here too! As I was lifting my foot, I recognized Brad’s choice of words for me to repeat lifting my foot. He would say, “Again” and I thought of Nick saying “kit” and smiled. I had done so many more of these PNFs at Barwis but here at ATI it’s different. At Barwis, I am training my muscles to work better but here at ATI, I am trying to get my muscles to BE better “again.”