Cowardice

I've been struggling to be patient with the PT student working on me, with my physical therapist. He tends to want to let me off the hook, not push me through just because I'm reporting pain. And it is simply identifying. Pain, in itself, is just information. I need all the help I can get to keep going, not just give up because it hurts.

Again.

He's a young man, with the tendency of the young to believe they can be understood just by saying what's in their mind. I often stop him, demanding clarification. "Is this what I should do, or should not do?" I insist. He tends to run them together, or have me look at demonstration outside my possible field of vision. Or tells me if it hurts, I can do less. He minds my tears. I'm having to push him. I don't need a damn tissue, I need to keep going.

I know he's trying, and his compassion - in anyone but a physical therapist - would be touching. But I am doing this because physical therapists are the nicest sadists I've ever met, and I need that kind of goal oriented torture. In my own sore brain, this is irritating beyond my ability to suppress my snark. I try to be calm and communicative, and fail. I am so relieved when the therapist intervenes.

I do get a bit cowardly in the evening, after stressing the damage, after a long day, when I'm tired and at the end of what I can do. I have been known to kneel on the floor a half an hour, just building up the courage to risk the discomfort of standing up, or rolling up into bed. Only to feel foolishly whimpy when I do, and it doesn't hurt at all.

Moby slunk into the closet while it rained for five minutes. And stayed slunk for a good hour or so. I can only assume the pressure changes must bother his ears. He even let me hold him in my lap, as long as I stayed on the low step stool in the kitchen - the kitchen floor a 'safe' place for him when he's feeling stressed. He's just come out to prowl, but more rain is looming. He does not buy our happy attitude to rain.

"You people are freaks."