THE JOYS OF PHYSICAL THERAPY

At 61 years of age, I'm still an athletic guy. My main physical problem is my arthritic right knee. I have been in pain for three years, but my Sports-Orthopaedic Surgeon, tells me I still have plenty of cartilage between "the old ball and socket", ergo, I don't need surgery. So I had him write me a prescription for physical therapy, instead of Vicodin. Sometimes I regret this decision!

My therapist is a beautifully-striking female,...a tall blonde around the age of 28 years. She is my daughter's age. My therapist has a Phd. in her field so she knows her stuff! She has a winning smile, and pleasant manner...BUT DON'T LET THAT FOOL YOU!

She is a NAZI!...A dominatrix who insists on inflicting pain on me, twice a week. Every session is a diabolical plan, designed by this cunning female, to contort my elderly body in a variety of positions which brings tears rolling down my cheeks! She justifies this torture with little quips like: "Come on, You can do it Rich!...You're a former athlete!...Push yourself harder!...C'mon, just five more reps!" Then she adds insult to injury by saying, "There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Bad???....Bad???...It was fucking horrible! (I am thinking this to myself, as I am smiling at her.) I press on stoically and proceed to the next exercise, gasping for air, like some old plow horse. Next, she has me in some kind of harness device, straining against elastic, doing lunges...then on to balancing boards, balls, machines...Christ!...I feel like a trained seal on the old Ed Sullivan show!

She ties my ankles together with a heavy duty elastic strap, and has me lumbering laterally across the room! The harness device is the worst...I have visions of me pulling it too far, and having the elastic !!!....I am frightened by the imagery of seeing it whacking me "upside the head"!

When all the exercise is done, she puts these "neato" rubber-suction-cup thingees, on my poor, swollen knee for a 15-minute ultrasound. Ahhhh...Heaven! She also throws an ice bag on my throbbing knee. Then she disappears for fifteen minutes...She leaves a bell next to me, in case I go into cardiac arrest. You know, the kind they have in hotels for bellhops. I often wonder where the hell she goes for that time period? She probably goes out for a smoke!..Who knows?

Naw, probably not...She is too much of a fitness Nazi. I hope next week, she doesn't bring whips and chains, or handcuff me to some strange torture device. The worst would be the red rubber ball, and strap device, to silence my elderly babble. To think fetish freaks pay for this stuff! Life gets more interesting every year.