27 April 2005

My appointment with Gavin was in the afternoon so I had the morning free to do some exercises and packing. I did my usual exercise bike and mini trampoline first and then went on to help Tim with some accounts that he needed for a meeting. I think I’m used to the fact that he always needed something urgent in the last minute. When I was working in accounting, I used to hate clients doing that – calling up in the last minute and wants something done just like that. I hated it because it meant I had to stay back or organise and get someone else to stay back and do it. On the other hand, those are the sort of jobs you can really make profit on. Since they wanted it in a hurry and didn’t give you too much time, you can almost always charge a premium on those jobs and they would never argue with you about the fees. I don’t think I miss those days at all.

I think morning physio sessions work better for me. I was feeling a bit tired already before I went to Epworth. I was a bit early for my appointments so I waited at my usual spot for Gavin. When he came in, he set me up on the mini trampoline first and then instructed another physio, Tracy, to stay there with me because he wanted me to do one minute of trampoline and one lap of walking and then the same again without the ankle brace on. It was pretty easy with the brace on but when I took off my brace, it was a different story. My whole body tensed up because the fear of injuring my ankle when it inverts. When I’m tense, my arm just kept going up and I really hated it. Gavin came to check on me from time to time. I told him that I really hate this because of the fear. I think this was a mistake because he said he’ll get me to do more of this until I feel comfortable with it.

I lost track of time but it felt like forever. It felt like I had my one hour session but Gavin came out and told me to go to the treatment room and he’ll get me to do some shoulder exercises. He directed me to go to the physio bed at the end of the room. There is another woman on the physio bed next to me. He set up some leg exercises for her to do and then handed me a stick and ask me to lift it up with both arms. I couldn’t see myself but I felt my left arm was not quite straight when I tried to push up the stick with both my arms. After a few repetitions, he put a wrap weight on the stick and asked me to do the same again. It felt quite heavy but when I looked at the weight, I was surprised to find that it’s only 1.5 kg. It felt a lot heavier than that. Gavin asked me to do 3 sets of 10 of this. My arms were quite tired before I finished. I told him that it felt like the stick is getting heavier but he turned around and corrected me. He said my arm is getting weaker. Whatever, anyway, the point is my arm is getting tired! He said once I master all these tricks, I’ll be discharged.

The next exercise he got me to do is a bit like Prema’s stretches for internal and external rotation of the shoulder but with weight. I found this quite hard to do because I have to prevent from just let gravity takes it which means I need to use more muscles.

The woman next to me complained about her back or shoulder pain. Gavin said it's called old age. I must have lost my sense of humour because I wouldn't think it's funny if he said that to me. In fact, I must be getting too sensitive because Gavin asked me if I was going away this week and I thought I heard him saying 'are you gaining weight' and I was not amused at all. Tim is probably the only one who can get away with calling me fat but nobody else can.

As I was leaving the treatment room, Gavin wished me a good holiday and said at least I can't get into trouble in Canberra. I told him no because there is nothing in Canberra. There were 3 other physios in the room and all guys. One of them mentioned about the adult shops in Fyshwick and they all started laughing. I must be getting old and stuffy because I didn't find that funny at all and was a bit offended by that.