Infinite Pain

Physical Therapy sucks.

I've had poor posture practically my whole life, but my body didn't decide to punish me for my laziness until this past year. I don't remember exactly when -- say sometime in the last six months -- but at some point, I was having trouble finding a comfortable position at night and was waking up with bad headaches and tingling in my right arm.

Then I started noticing that the tingling was also occurring while sitting at my desk.

And then I started noticing that the tingling was occurring every time I moved my arm forward while in a sitting position.

Naturally, I discussed this with my doctor. He scheduled some X-rays. They revealed that I'm a horrible sloucher and I have mis-aligned vertebrae. And these mis-aligned vertebrae are playing havoc with the nerves that run down my right arm.

I was thankful that he did not mention surgery, but instead scheduled me for some physical therapy. That sounded nice! I envisioned a team of Swedish masseuses give me neck-rubs and back-rubs until magically the pain went away.

Um. No.

In reality, I have a very nice middle-aged Indian man who took one look at me -- the way I was standing and sitting and bending over -- and tsk'd a few times and then told me that I have horrible posture and I will now be subjected to several weeks of torture in order to alleviate the consequences of a lifetime of physiological malpractice.

So far, we have four exercises:

(1) Sitting up straight (!) in a chair and pushing my chin back and then bending my head backward until I can touch the back of my head to the back of the chair. [3 sets of 15 repetitions]

(2) Sitting up straight (!) in a chair and pushing my chin back firmly with my left hand and then bending my head backward until I can touch the back of my head to the back of the chair. [3 sets of 15 repetitions]

(3) Sitting up straight (!!) in a chair and pushing my chin back firmly with my left hand and bending my head backward until I can touch the back of my head to the back of the chair  and then pushing my neck up and over the back of the chair until it feels like my spine is going to rupture. [3 sets of 15 repetitions]

(4) Doing push-ups against the exam table while holding my body in a straight line at a 45 degree angle to the table. [1 set of 50 repetitions]

When I am done with those, I am allowed to go home and practice all of them every two hours.

He promises me that, if I'm a good boy and do my exercises, he'll let me reduce them to every four hours. Some day.

But now, it's nap-time...