So. Yesterday I hired a personal trainer at my gym.  This is not some New Years Resolution.  This is the realization that at age 63 if I want to learn to scuba dive I need to be in better shape.  I’ve been researching scuba and although it is certainly within my capabilities even if I were an older woman, I would be looking at, if not outright failure, certainly discouragement.

What stopped me dead in my tracks was this: carrying a 25 pound O2 tank from the car to the waves.  You’re reading about a woman who presently is nursing a tendinitis in her thumb from….knitting.  That prospect just sounded like something that would make me not enjoy it at all.  Yet I will not go to my deathbed thinking “wish I’d gone under the sea.”  I can’t go to outer space which would have been my first choice, and it has been described as exactly that – the closest thing we can get to the experience of rocketing out of the atmosphere.

I take a step back and have another epiphany.  I am, by many accounts of satisfied customers, an excellent physical therapist.  I’ve been doing it for 35+ years.  However, this is my experience (abridged)  : 1)SF General trauma center –  head injuries, major burns, AIDS in its infancy, med-surg post op. 2) Mt Diablo hospital – post coronary bypass graft, i.e. getting them out of bed day two, dialysis patients. more ICU, more med-surg. 3) Skilled nursing facility – rehab of mostly frail or otherwise incapacitated elderly. 4) Home health – out of the hospital or skilled nursing but not ready for intensive outpatient (and many never would be, total hips, knees, fractures excluded)  and now 5) private practice with mostly frail elderly in their homes.  Sprinkling among this is some outpatient orthopedic which is just not my thing, reason being I find it incredibly boring and after working with incapacitated sick people I had no patience with a jock who would come in and “still have a twinge of pain.”. I understand that could be standing in the way of the jock returning to tennis but I just didn’t enjoy it.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t good at it, it just means I don’t have tons of experience because I didn’t pursue sports medicine.

What does all this have in common? It was not a required skill set to progress weight training beyond ten pounds except for the forays into outpatient. The focus is on healing bodily functions, balance, walking again for heaven’s sake. I watch for proper form of course and can spot a fall about to happen by a slight change in arm position.  In some cases, I was providing an opportunity for improved quality of life as a disease process takes them down for the final count.

Where does the epiphany come in? For years I have avoided the gym because I am intimidated by it all and was too embarrassed to admit I wouldn’t know where to start. (I’m a physical therapist. Shouldn’t I know everything about everything? Never mind that there are as many specialties in PT as there are cars in a mall parking lot on Black Friday.).

Well, I know where to start but always felt I was being too easy on myself. I also worried that because it is impossible to watch myself while I pump iron that I cannot assess my own form.  Doctors shouldn’t treat themselves   Neither should physical therapists   And yet that is exactly what I have been doing or should I say not doing.

I have chosen a personal trainer who speaks my language- he has a Masters in Human Movement from ATStill University – and his bio states: “I enjoy the challenge  of developing a program to address each goal and need that a client has.”  Well, yeah they all say that.  But it’s this ” I like to find ways to make the program fun, fun programs are followed, followed programs are successful.”  THIS IS  MY PHILOSOPHY IN A NUTSHELL.  I have never, in my home health experience, gone in and given cookie cutter exercises.  I give a “menu” of exercises that accomplish the same goals.  The patient is the boss, I am the guide. (Some of my patients would strongly disagree that I’m not the boss. I’m a demanding guide for sure).

Sometimes I have had to establish rapport with patients who are reluctant or say they are too old or they don’t like to exercise by admitting to them that I hold the undisputed title “World’s Laziest Physical Therapist.”  I’m human. I would rather knit, quilt, read, watch Survivor, garden or who knows what all than get my sorry ass to the gym.

I don’t know how I’m going to establish that rapport now. However, it may be that I will still be the World’s Laziest Physical Therapist but will get to the gym just so I can fulfill my dream of floating underwater – my idea of heaven on earth.

Stay tuned.  I guarantee this is a blog saga that will continue.