OW!
Today at PT, I learned some new exercises and, as usual, checked to make sure I'm doing the old ones correctly (as usual, the answer is 'not quite'). Then she brought the pain. Sure, it's the sort of pain that is tolerable and very different from the pointless chronic crap of the last several years, but for all ye with bad soccer knees, please know that I have great sympathy for your struggle with that evil entity known as the IT band. My problems with it are up at the hip, rather than down at the knee--the hip where the bone chips were dug out for the fusion has really been a bigger problem to fix than learning how to move my spine. Some tiny little muscle is overdeveloped; the IT band is too tight to function properly, and the phrase "soft tissue work" is deceptively friendly sounding. "Soft tissue work" is actually a euphemism for "squashing various tender bits in such a manner as to cause you to yelp and clench your jaw". It is also a euphemism for "having the PT ask lots of questions all of a sudden, in an effort to distract you from how much it hurts". It had the intended result--after she was done, I could do a new stretch properly and without my hip popping and drooping--but jeez. "Soft tissue work". Hmph.
More than anything else, it's yet another level to the education I'm getting through physical therapy. Every week I see how much better my strength and balance are getting; every week I discover something I'm able to do without repercussions--and every week I learn about some other dumb, pain-causing habit I forced my body into while coping poorly with the original problem. It's tough knowing that if I'd started this stuff in the year after the fusion I wouldn't have some of the existing problems, but I try to ignore that and think instead about all the other problems I'm preventing. Or delaying, at any rate.
It's been a while since I mentioned a book other than a cookbook. I just started it this morning, but so far I'm loving Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Although one scene about foot binding was so brutally gross that it put me off my lunch. And actually, maybe my dinner. Somehow, though, there's a formal precision to the writing that got me through it and I'm having a hard time putting it down.