Today, I embark on a ten-course treatment plan to recover my shoulder. Physical therapy brings back many memories from the nineteen fifties. I was fifteen years old and literally a Superman. Nothing could stop me. It was summer, and I played eighteen holes of golf by ten a.m. with my friends, then pedaled my bike five miles to Tumey’s Grocery store in Roseland during ninety-five-degree weather to my job delivering groceries. At 5:30, I pedaled back home in the heat of late afternoon to a waiting supper provided by a mom who never stopped loving me. After supper, it was out to meet the guys standing on the corner to watch the girls go by until eleven, then finally home to sleep. I never got out of bed the next morning. In fact, I had a first class ambulance ride to Contagious Disease Hospital. That is where this Superman lived for the next twelve weeks until he had another ambulance ride to Michale Reese Hospital for physical therapy. That was in a period of time when there was no vaccine for polio, and I had to tough it out with only attention and care from nurses and doctors. The disease damaged my neck, arms, and legs before it stopped to go elsewhere. The physical therapy lasted for two months full time, and another six months part time. The term “no pain, no gain” had to originate from that arm of medicine.
I look forward to this afternoon’s session, as painful as it will be. I know what can happen when a good therapist works you over repeatedly day after day until the pain eventually disappears and is replaced by an attitude of “Is that the best you can do? Bring it on.”
Filed under: Biography, family, health care | Tagged: Physical therapy, Polio | 1 Comment »