Island living ingrains in us an enduring patience at every turn, whether we’re rolling with cancelled ferries, scheduling doctor appointments on the mainland, or yearning for sunlight amid months of rain. That patience can gradually morph into a lapse in being proactive if we’re not careful.
If you are injured, I highly recommend that you get on the calendar at Orcas Island Physical Therapy, no matter which therapist you choose. I’ve heard they are all fantastic. I am currently seeing Scott Heisinger, and he knows his stuff!
A month ago, I asked a boy at a birthday party if I could try his Onewheel skateboard.
(This is a girl in Wales from Onewheelgirls on Instagram.)
We were in the middle of a grassy field, so I felt like there was ample padding in case I were to fall. I have a different kind of electric skateboard at home that I bought from my older son before he went off to college, which I’ve been slowly and carefully practicing on flat, clean parking lots, though I had recently set it aside because I didn’t want to hurt my back, which was one of the only other places I’d injured in the past. I’m not a daredevil – I like being in one piece.
Having only ridden the Onewheel about 20 seconds, I decided to hop off while things were going well in order to switch gears and head out to some locations on the weekend farm tour. Well, you don’t “hop off” a Onewheel, which is what several of the kids at the party had already duly informed me. Instead, you slow down to a stop, raise your heel, and the board disengages and you step off. Going right into the habit formed on my skateboard at home, I jumped off. In that split second, the downward force of jumping pushed the Onewheel down, which told it to accelerate, so before my foot even made it off the board, it was accelerating one way while my other foot was about to land on the ground. In essence, I was immediately being pulled in the splits in the air. I am not flexible, so with feet going in opposite directions, all the downward force went into my left inner knee. I landed in the most awkward, inflexible, non-splits splits to the sound of a few pops, and immediately crunched up my face in pain. There I was, on the ground, the now-spectacle of a group of middle-school boys, after having fallen off a Onewheel while going all of about 3 miles an hour at the most. It was the kind of fall that probably looked like, “So…what’s the big deal?” But you know when you’ve just crossed over into a new paradigm. I knew I wasn’t going to hop up and skip my way back to the car to the farm tour.
The second I was injured, lying there on the grass – and I haven’t had many injuries, so it’s a bit foreign to me – I was MAD! With all of my being, I wanted to go back 30 seconds and be INTACT! You never realize how important being intact feels until you aren’t and can’t get it back right away. Not only that, but my mind was flooded with frustration because my family has needed me to be the strong one, the driver when rides are needed (we have a stick shift and this was my clutch leg), the person who is ever-available. My husband had a major bike accident many months ago, and we can’t have two of us messed up!
The next thousand thoughts included things like, Will I need surgery? If so, who will drive me to the hospital? Who will take care of me? Will I miss seeing our son at family weekend at his college in late October? Will I miss out on visiting my 89-year-old mom at her new care facility in Texas? Will I miss a trip we had planned to California and instead lie on a couch and watch the rain fall for the next three to six months? Will I have a permanent hobble until it is fixed? Did I just trade my 4-mile-a-day walk for a sedentary winter? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!
The boy who let me try his Onewheel and his brother both politely asked if I was okay, and offered to help me walk as the other kids probably shrugged their shoulders and undoubtedly walked off wondering what the big deal was, because it really looked like no big deal, I’m sure. An almost embarrassingly minor deal!
When I got to my car, I got in the driver’s seat and pulled the seat forward, pushing my left foot into the clutch so that I wouldn’t have to move my knee much. I figured I had a few short minutes before my knee locked up, so I headed home with cautious urgency. The boy’s dad had kindly offered to drive me home, but I’m stubbornly independent and had a feeling that would be the last time in a while that I could be that way.
A few minutes of uncomfortable clutch work and I was home. Just in time for a couple to come and look at our couch, which I’d put for sale on Buy Sell Trade. Unfortunately, now I would need it. They pulled up in the driveway just as I had hobbled to my front door, so I turned around to greet them and burst into tears. The weight of knowing I was now unable to do much of anything overwhelmed me. We’d already had a really tough 8 months after Mike’s many injuries, so this was just downright lame, literally.
The couple was so sweet. Thankfully, the couch wasn’t quite what they were looking for. They offered to help, but I declined, and as they drove off, I limped in the house again and sobbed for a bit. Our younger son would be at the birthday party and later a sleepover, I texted my husband but knew he’d be on the mainland for a Cross Country meet until late that night, and I just needed a big bearhug. I knew who to call.
Our older son has been using an electric skateboard for about 5 years now. One day a few years ago, unbeknownst to him, the road crew had done a minor job in the middle of the night on Lover’s Lane, which is the road he took to school every single day on his skateboard. He knew the road like the back of his hand, but what he didn’t know was that on the night the road crew put a new line under the road, they had repaved it to have a little half-inch blip spanning both lanes. You could barely even see it. He didn’t see it at all, didn’t even know to look for it. All of a sudden when he went over it at speed one morning, he went flying in the air along with his notoriously monstrous, heavy backpack full of books, a computer, and half of his tech-y life in it. I didn’t know it until a few hours later, when his science teacher called and asked if I was aware of the fall. Apparently, he had not been able to stand up ever since he had sat down in class. The paramedics were called and we escorted him to the medical center for X-rays, where they were taking inaugural photos of all staff members celebrating the switch from UW Medicine to Island Primary Care. No bones were broken but he spent the next 4 days in bed, unable to walk except with a lot of help to get to the bathroom.
I called him at college, and he sweetly consoled me over FaceTime.
Later in the evening, I texted our neighbors across the street to ask if they had any Advil. Ours was up a flight of steep stairs.
Accidents like to happen on Saturdays, when all medical professionals are finally getting a weekend break.
Thankfully, Dr. Fleming happened to be traveling alongside my husband for the Cross Country meet, so that evening she got on the phone and advised me to set aside everything buzzing in my brain about what I may or may not be able to do in the near future. I hadn’t even mentioned those things that were weighing me down, yet she spoke to all of my fears right away. That really softened me, helping me to just be, breathe, and be in the present moment.
Not to mention following the advice of a Tibetan monk I had just seen at a library talk, who advised people to become friends with adversity!
On Monday I was seen at the medical center here, and they informed me that physical therapy comes before an MRI, according to insurance rules.
I started physical therapy with Scott the next day, and I can’t tell you how hopeful he made me feel. I’m a very active person and before I got hurt, I was probably at my life’s zenith of energy output and constant motion. Going to physical therapy with Scott helped me immediately in a number of physical and emotional ways.
First of all, by moving my leg around, he could ascertain what was hurt and what was intact since I had no MRI imaging. So right away, I had answers to my anatomical questions. It’s a relief to have answers, no matter what they are. Answers are so much better than not knowing anything and wondering endlessly. Secondly, he knew which exercises to do, how often to do them, what not to do, and gave me daily homework. Knowing that you can work on getting better is a huge mental boost. Thirdly, getting on a weekly calendar of regularly visiting a physical therapy practitioner who can figure out your progress and decide which next exercises you should work on each week is healing in all ways. It’s even healing socially because you see others who are doing the same thing, so you’re all in the same boat in a sense.
And I’ll say it again, Scott really knows his stuff.
I am now walking almost without a limp, and because of my daily PT exercises I have never felt like I’ve had to be a sedentary, hopeless bump on a log, wondering whether I’ll get better. I’ve been able to keep myself active in modified ways to the point that now I am almost walking normally. I can’t yet squat down, but seeing as I’ve gone from the inability to bend my knee to being able to gently bring my calf lightly against my hamstring while lying on my back on the couch, I’m elated. Little milestones have happened every single day. I’ve even been able to make several of my PT exercises into dance routines in my living room. And I’m almost back to my 4-mile walk as of today, except for being a bit slower and feeling a very tired knee afterward.
All of this is to say that if you are needing hope and a feeling of being proactive in the process, go get weekly physical therapy. These folks are great at what they do, and it will improve you mental state by leaps and bounds!
Thank you for all of your knowledge, enthusiasm, and ability, Scott!
I also have to give a lot of credit to prayer and God. While none of us really knows how much a situation is improved by prayer and God, and I’m still (and always will be) trying to figure out who/what God is, what I know from experience is that every time something has happened to my body (not just injury) I feel that prayer has resulted in healing that I am so grateful for, sometimes in ways that nothing else has helped.
