Flashes of Panic

As I approach the end of my second month of physical therapy for this damned foot, I am still not running. Nor can I tell if I’m making any progress at all. I have good days where I feel flexible and strong. I have bad days where I feel like I have a stone in my shoe. Sometimes they’re the same day.

I don’t really know what to make of it. I’ve long since given up looking for miracles, but so far there’s not even a light at the end of this tunnel.

I think I’m a good patient; I do pretty much anything they tell me to do, cheerfully, and I don’t complain. But behind the jokes I make about amputation I can hear the petulant child lurking: “I’ve been dealing with this for thirteen months! I’ve been doing your exercises since July! Why isn’t it fixed?” Sometimes I wonder if being patient and stoic isn’t the wrong course to take; if perhaps a little impatience and frustration might not put me on a faster recovery track. Is it possible to be too patient? If I start down another course, don’t I have to start all over being patient with that?

Unfortunately, these aren’t just thought experiments. The doctor’s prescription for the PT runs only through next Friday; I’ll need another to continue. The insurance approval was for thirty visits; I’ve done twenty-four or twenty-five, if I’m counting correctly. And today’s therapist pointed out that I’ve had twenty iontophoresis treatments, when, she said, after about fifteen you’ve had all the good from it that you’re likely to get.

I feel like I’m spending a lot of time (and a fair amount of money—about a car payment, so far, if my car wasn’t paid for already) on progress so gradual I can’t tell if it’s even really progress.

Now playing: You Wreck Me from Wildflowers by Tom Petty