HOW TO GET MOVING

Chapter 4
West Coast Offense

Recap: (scroll down for complete chapters)
Chapter 2:  Racing to make a contest submission, I write and draw day and night. I develop Repetitive Strain Injury.  Now my arm hurts when I write and draw for more than six minutes.  I’m rescued from terminal pessimism by my maddeningly upbeat occupational therapists.
Chapter 3:  I escape the humiliation of my incompetence performing assigned OT exercises, by engaging in wild fantasies of creative accomplishment, which are encouraged by my maddingly upbeat psychoanalyst.

I have a dirty little secret to confess.
 
You recall in chapter two when I was getting so excited about my idea for a new Hallmark channel movie, Thera Cane:  A Story of Love and Christmas?

​Sometimes when I am doing my OT exercises, I glance over at the TV and catch a few minutes of a Hallmark channel movie my wife “watches” out of the corner of her eye while she does the Times crossword.
 
Hope is a mental health expert.  She realizes the importance of titrating the relentless tide of news about floods, fires, fentanyl, tornadoes, terrorists and treason with a dose of anxiolytic love story.
 
I agree.  Hallmark distracts me from the numbing repetition of stretches and lifts.
 
Truth to tell, sometimes I get caught up in a movie and watch till the end.
 
The second half is the best part: when the girl ditches the bad boy friend, realizes the other guy, the one she had been discounting all along, is really her one true love, and embraces him with a blissful look as the gently falling snowflakes alight on her unfurrowed brow.
 
Don’t be so surprised.
Did you think I get my brilliant ideas from the interwebs?
 
I’m a little embarrassed about my flirtations with the Hallmark channel.
But that’s nothing compared to the shame I felt when my complete ignorance of anatomy was revealed to my OT team.
 
My OT’s helped me feel better, too.
 
No matter how often I told them I was afraid I’d never get back to writing and drawing, they insisted that I would.
 
 I complained,
“When I started just my right arm hurt.
Now my right arm, shoulders, neck, and back hurt, too.”

​“That’s what you call progress?!”
 
“Marion said, “Those other parts are just jealous of the attention your arm is receiving.”
 
Rebekah said, “All your parts work together, you know.  Isn’t it beautiful, the human neuro-musculo-skeletal system?”
 
Which was supposed to persuade me that having more of me hurt was a sign of improvement.
 
My OT’s had an answer for everything.
 
This is how they dealt with my incorrigibly negative feelings:

​Do you notice a resemblance between the approach of my OT’s and of my analyst?
 
I call it the empathic pivot, as in:
1) “Yes, yes, we know it hurts and you’re convinced you’re never going to get better.
PIVOT
2) “Now let’s get working and fix this.”
 
They never even said, "We know it hurts."
Much less, “Of course you feel terrible. it’s devastating to be unable to do what you love.”
 
They just listened intently to my weekly dysfunction report and moved right on to poking and prodding me.
 
Which worked pretty well.
 
I’m grateful to my OT team
 
They rescued me from the swamp of demoralization.
 
One hundred seventy-seven times.

​It was ultra-embarrassing to admit to my team that I was such a deficient anatomy student in medical school that I had to invent the mnemonic S-E-W to remember the order of the arm joints:

​My classmates had no trouble using the “towering tops” jingle to memorize the twelve cranial nerves in order, Column A à Column B:

I never could get beyond memorizing Column A.
 
Over the years I’ve struggled to come to terms with my failure.
I think I’m okay with it now.
 
I realize that my take on Towering Tops was different from my classmates’:
 
I never cared much about the order of the cranial nerves.
I liked Towering Tops because it was a spark of poetry and fun in the stressfully boring life of a first-year medical student.
 
I enjoyed daydreaming about the Finn and German, and wondering what a hop is:

​The jingle stayed in my head all these years, so I could take it out and use it for something completely different than memorizing the cranial nerves.
 
Now I take my shame about my abysmal anatomy skills and my discouragement about my upper extremity,
I associate to these awful feeling-experiences from different phases of my life,
I mix and mash and massage them, and out jumps this word/picture story, driven by an organic force along an unpredictable path.
 
That’s what psychoanalysis is all about: sifting through your heavy mental detritus and making something new and light and energetic out of it.
 

Something that moves and enlivens you
That connects you to yourself and your fellow humans.
 
If you can accomplish this simply by walking through a wall on Platform 9 3/4, King's Cross Station more power to you.

I’ve had to put a s---load of effort into it.
 
Come to think of it, you’re not going to become a paragon of self-development simply by walking through a wall at King’s Cross Station.
 
There’s the whole Hogwarts curriculum to get through.
Not to mention extra-curriculars like dementor dueling and quidditch competitions.

 As George Bush famously said about everything, "It's hard work."
 
Do you know who else is working hard?
Visually gifted neuroscientists, who spare no effort to further enhance our ability to memorize the cranial nerves, in order.
 
Thanks to them we have two compelling 21st century visual mnemonics:

​Number Cruncher looks frightening, but he’s really a rather tame cyborg who swears by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.
Ms. Digital Delight will annoy you with her insistently sunny disposition, but she’s a whiz at doing your taxes.
 
I have to make a difficult choice now.
 
I can wrap up this chapter now, as planned.
Or I can tell you what happened today.
 
If I tell you what happened today, I will destroy the carefully planned chronological architecture of my story, How to Get Moving.
 
According to my plan, we’re not yet up to today in the story. 
Right now, as of the cranial nerves, we’re in February, 2018.
 
But something bad happened today.
October 15, 2018.
Something traumatic.
I want to tell you about it.

If I tell you about it now, it might not hurt so much.  I might feel a little better.
I definitely should tell you now.
 
But If I tell you now, the entire chronological architecture of How to Get Moving will get messed up.
No question, I should tell you later.

What to do? What to do ?...........
 
Come to think of it, the chronological architecture is already totally messed up.
Maybe a list will help me figure this out:

​This isn’t helping!
It’s only making things worse.
I’m caught up in chaotic time warp!

SCREW CHRONOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE!

​Today Rebekah told me she’s leaving her job at Freedom Physical Therapy and moving
to Seattle

​How can she do this!!!???
She doesn’t even plan to live there forever.
It’s just for sh---s and giggles.
She and husband are coming back in a few years.
 
I don’t need her in a few years.  I need her 

​We made a plan today for my last three visits and for after she leaves.
 
F—K THE PLAN!
 
I feel like a little kid.
Rebekah and Marion have always been around to help me get better.
How am I supposed to keep on getting better when my team is falling apart?
 
I’ll have to do more on my own.
 
F—K DOING MORE ON MY OWN!
 
They can’t take half of my team away!
Can they?
I’m suing!
Can you give me the name of a good rehab attorney?
.
Now all my doubts have returned.
 
I feel sad today.

Update (1)
I can’t believe next Tuesday is the first anniversary of Rebekah’s departure.
Rebekah’s had a baby.  She still lives in Seattle.
 
I felt tearful for a whole week after Rebekah left.
Gradually my sadness wound down.
 
I haven’t felt very sad since.
About Rebekah, anyway.
 
I'm fortunate that I still have Marion to help me   with my  upper extremity rehab.     
If I want to make her laugh, I say, “Now don’t get any ideas about dry needling!”

Thanks to the physical and mental ministrations of Rebekah, Marion, Hope and my small but devoted band of  supporters at Freedom Physical Therapy and Square One and a Half, I’m back to blogging.
 
Life is pretty much as it was before RSI struck, except for some minor adjustments to my daily blogging schedule:

I don’t know if my arms, shoulders, and neck are back to normal, because I don’t remember what normal was.
 
No doubt I’ll never be the same as I was before RSI came into my life.
 
Are we ever the same after something as we were before?
 

​Update (2)
This is going to be the last chapter of How to Get Moving.
I think.
 
What more is there to say after you get better?
 
No, wait!  There is more.
 
I go back to bed in the middle of writing these postscripts and have a dream:
Hope and I are about to get off a train.  I panic because I can’t find my duffel bag of clothes.  Hope walks out onto the platform, but I don’t follow her because I have to keep looking for my bag.  I can’t accept that it’s gone.

​I wake up with a bad feeling in my gut.
I’m awake, but I’m still trying to find my duffel.
If I only look long enough and hard enough…
 
As I give up my search, I feel something coming on strong:
Love/Time.
Love/Time is what you feel when you realize you should show the people you love that you do, before it’s too late.
 
Especially Hope.

​Also, my children, my relatives, and my friends.
 
And Greta Thunberg, for trying to save our planet.
 
If you want to hear the music, listen to this James Taylor song.
 
Thanks for being here!