Buggies

So it was fogged in and 58° when I left work tonight, bright sunshine and 79° when I pulled in at the house 30 minutes later. What's up with that? It's freakin' nuts is what. It's supposed to hit 98° tomorrow at the house. Blech.

So pretty mellow weekend. I spent most of Saturday in pain because I'd had my first physical therapy session Friday for my back. The PT guy, we'll call him Matt (cause that's his name), asked me all the requisite questions and we covered how PT had gone with Kaiser. See at Kaiser they did this thing where I rested my upper body on the therapist while she then rotated my body to mobilize the vertebrae that are stuck. Oh I can't explain it right, but anyhow it was gentle, extremely low impact, and, aside from the first couple sessions when she totally spazzed out a muscle, painless. "Yeah," Matt said, "I'm not going to be that gentle."

You know, there are times those words wouldn't be a bad thing. They might even be welcomed. But not when we're monkeying around with my back people.

Anyhow, Matt crunched my back a few times, which really wasn't that bad because I crunch my back anyway, but when he tried to crunch my back and it refused to crunch. Oh. God. Now that hurt. He seemed genuinely perplexed that he couldn't get it to move. And then had me do all sorts of twists and stretches to reinforce the mobilization of that area.

That was followed by "heat & stim" which apparently meant a heat pad (heaven) and stimulation. And said stimulation is mild shock therapy. No joke. They've got these gelled up pads that they put on my back and a hand-held zapper thingy that is cranked up to "just shy of painful." But of course you have to find painful first before you can dial back to "just shy" of painful. That was the weirdest thing. At first it felt like little buggies crawling under my skin. Then big buggies. Then it was just tingly. I felt pretty spaced out when I left the clinic.

So anyhow, we'll be repeating that twice a week for the next month. I only hope that every day-after doesn't feel like Saturday. Oh, and I hope we can fix my back. In the meantime, I'll be doing the exercises that he gave me.