PHYSICAL THERAPY

By this time, my leg had gotten well from the Phlebitis and I could at last say “Goodbye'' to those tight, white, support hose and Jack would no longer have to line up nurses to give me the Heparin shots. I was making progress. I could now start physical therapy at our Orangeburg hospital.
Jack would drive me to the hospital and then stay the hour to learn from Teresa G what exercises I was to do at home.

-Push arm out.
-Back to side.
-Elbow to stomach....

Most of the time I couldn't comprehend what was being said but even if I had, I couldn't have remembered the exercises two minutes. I didn't at all mind doing the exercises because I had always been an active person, but it was no fun now since I couldn't count well enough to keep track of how many I had done plus my muscles wouldn't do what I wanted them to.
The paralyzed muscles in my right arm made my arm feel heavy and would hardly work at all. My whole arm felt like many, many strong rubber bands all up and down my arm were restricting all the muscles from moving. I would have to muster up all the strength I had to work against the rubber bands...........against the paralyzed muscles.

My right leg muscles made my leg feel as though I were ''trying to run through wafer's”, as Patricia N so ably expressed it in her book As I Am. There was no physical pain.... but just the pain of knowing that the muscles wouldn't do what I told them to do. They just wouldn't work. That's paralysis.