None of it is glamorous. The pain is always there. I suppose it always was; I just had to get to be about 47 years old to become aware of it. Thirty-three years post-fusion of two-thirds of my back and I suppose it’s normal that my hips hurt all the time. They do have Harrington rods drilled deep into them.
I still use the stationary bike I bought in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, when I could no longer go to the rec center to get on the elliptical.
It takes active effort to hold my right shoulder back at all times, all waking hours of the day.
But, my small, little, limited workouts these days revolve around these tools.
The block is for balance exercises; I stand on one foot on it for leg extensions.
The bean bag and I are new friends but we are quickly developing a hate/hate relationship; its twin lives in the bedroom, for sleep.
There’s nothing special about the ball; it’s a kid’s bouncy ball I bought at Ingles.
And the two-pound weights are simple, but a repetitive part of the day.
The beanbag came from happysew.com. I had no idea before about 4 months ago that there were whole companies that specialize in scoliosis physical therapy devices. This is one of them.
It is not a happy thing. I’ve described my back situation before, but my thoracic curve is also twisting my ribcage such that my ribs both twist and a hump to the right.
My physical therapist wanted me to lie on my right side with this bag under horizontal under the apex of the curve of the hump.
I adapted it so that the bag lies under the worst part of that side as I lie on my back, because the hump also is beginning to protrude under my shoulder blades.
And she didn’t tell me to do this, but I adapted the floor flies she taught me a good while ago to lying on the bean bag while I do them…I do about 50 reps like that. And while I do the reps and lie this way, my knees are bent with the ball between them. And while I lie this way, doing the reps, I do the Schroth breathing exercises my physical therapist taught me…breathing in on the down, breathing out very slowly, as controlled as possible, visualizing inflating my left side, on the up.
And, it’s always a painful-ah-yes-I-had-no-idea-my-body-was-ill-contorted when I first lie down in that position. My right shoulder blade protests, my whole left side burns as it hasn’t realized it was collapsing, under the force of the internal stretch.
As I get further into the floor flies, it becomes easier to manipulate my left shoulder blade to make it protrude, so that my arms are more in the alignment they should be.
And, the longer I do these exercises, the more aware I become that my body is severely contorted inside, in ways I am helpless to correct at all.
Tonight I did the bridge pose reps my therapist likes me to do, with the bean bag under my right shoulder. That was a new kind of….I don’t know what.
My body is contorted in ways that may be invisible to people who see me in public; I don’t know.
It’s such an integral part of who I am that I can hardly imagine how it’s not written all over how I move, even.
And my hips hurt. And my right shoulder hurts sometimes. And my left side screams in protest when I attempt to stretch it out.
And I don’t use my Swedish ladder bars in the bathroom for the other part of the exercises as much as I should. Because I also sometimes sit on my legs, on the floor, in front of the ladder, and hang with my left hand about six rungs up, and my right hand about five rungs up, and hang with my whole weight resting on my hands, and also do those breathing exercises to try to inflate my left side. And as I do it, I can frequently feel the twist of my left ribcage.
It’s sort of a feeling akin to fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.
And I have a stool I keep beside the Swedish ladder bars, and there is a resistance band tied to it, and sometimes I do the one that is the hardest of all…about five breath’s worth…where I sit with my right side to the bars, and hold onto the bar at arm level, and lift my left arm above me, holding the resistance band, and, pulling the resistance band down, I breathe out the Schroth breathing at the same time. About five of these reps is about all I can do.
But, when I stand up from the floor fly exercises with the bean bag, or when I stand up from the hanging from the bars, miraculously…my shoulders are somewhat even.
And, when I’m feeling super-compliant with my physical therapy, I attempt to sleep on my right side with the beanbag horizontal under me in the bed. That one is difficult because, as the curve progresses, it becomes more difficult to sleep on my right side.
And, sometimes…just sometimes….when I lie on that right side with the beanbag under me just long enough…sometimes I can more easily feel the bottom left of my ribcage, a part of my body that seems to have thoroughly checked out of the human feeling experience whatsoever.
And when I just can’t lie on my right side anymore, I move to my back and attempt to sleep in the same position in the bed that I sleep with the beanbag under me for the floor flies, with it under my shoulder blade and right rib cage. It’s not as easy to sleep like that as one would think.
And, when I’m depressed, it all falls by the wayside, and I sleep on my left side, the weight of the world falling on my left ribcage that is willing itself to painlessly collapse.
At any rate, my entire internal scaffolding structure feels like it has been tested to limits tonight. And I am twisted, and there is no untwisting, and the best I can do is maintain and know the difference between hurt pain and normal pain, because the normal pain is just a baseline living now.
And truthfully, I don’t think about it most of the time.
