A good looking day

Tuesday I woke up feeling sluggish. I was moving so slow it took me all of two hours to get ready to go to physical therapy. The driver was waiting for me when I stepped into the lobby of the hotel and I was five minutes early.  I think I was five minutes early, but it seems that every clock in Panama is set to a different time varying by as much as fifteen minutes. The driver was one I haven't seen before and his name was Eric. He took me to the bio-fitness center and escorted me upstairs. I went into the gym area and asked Ivan if I could warm up on the stationary bike. He told me to go for it. Ivan was working the Jimmy another of the MS patients and Jimmy was lifting weights. I hopped on a bike and started peddling. Jimmy joined me on an adjacent bike for his cooldown period.  I asked how he was doing and he said that yesterday was a very painful day. He said that he screamed like a little girl when Dr. Pichel gave him his intrathecal injection. I told him about the problem Dr. Pichel had with my injection. Jimmy told me that he was doing great otherwise. He has regained all of his sense of touch and he has no noticable effects from MS. He told me how strange it was that he was the oldest of seven siblings and he was the one that never smoked or drank and always took care of himself, yet he was the one that ended up with MS. We talked about the stress of being in the restaurant business and Jimmy gave me the low down on all the drivers and which ones are lazy and which ones are on the ball.


Jimmy finished his cool down and left, and I peddled until Ivan came for me. We repeated much of the routine from yesterday but Ivan added in an exercise where I sat on a large ball and rotated my trunk left and right holding a smaller two pound ball in outstreached arms. At the far end of each rotation I would bounce the ball on the floor and catch it, then at the center of every other rotation I would do a chest pass to Ivan. Although this exercise was painful at first it felt good to use and stretch my sore core muscles. I know that every patient that comes to physical therapy will be in a different condition and will be given different exercises but physical therapy and/or exercise is a very important part of the recovery process. The old addage - use it or loose it - has never been more true and I think the tendency is for many of us with degenerative disease is to just give up and succumb.


I was working my way through a grid exercise Ivan had set up when I heard, "There will be absolutely no wearing of Cowboy jerseys in this facility." I turned and saw Bill, the director of BioFit watching me exercise. I told him he would have to deal with this tee shirt for the next three weeks.  He is a Green Bay Packers fan and we talked football for a couple of minutes.  Bill named his first born son after Brett Farve and I told him that it was too bad Brett defected to the Vikings. Bill said I was doing really well with the exercises and told me it was going to take time, but that he has seen improvement with all the MS patients that have come through there, even the ones in wheel chairs.


Eric, the driver, was waiting for me in the BioFit lobby when I finished and took me back to the Hotel. John was making breakfast when I walked in the door. I felt invigorated after the workout and John commented on how good I looked. I ate and we watched the rain clouds turn the sky black as they moved toward us across the city. There was a nice thunder and lightening show to keep me entertained for the afternoon. It is the rainy season here in Panama, but we have had very little rain. The first few days it rained briefly in the afternoons and for a few days there was no rain at all. This was the first day that it rained hard for a couple of hours. After the showers passed I walked with John to the little store in the bottom of the hotel and we purchased a watermelon and bottled water. We then went to the hotel gym and rode the stationary bikes for almost a half hour.


I suppose most people are interested to know if I've felt any improvements at this point of my treatment. I hesitate to post anything I think I feel and it's difficult to determine if any of the MS symptoms are lessening due to the overall pain and soreness from the lipo surgery. I still don't feel that I'm at the point of physical ability that I was when I arrived in Panama. One thing I have noticed is that the chronic pain that I've had in my lower back for many years has dissappeared.