I’ll admit it: I haven’t really had the time to do the PT
I promised to do in order to heal the Achilles tendonitis I have in both legs.
I’ll also admit that I’m damn pissed about how long it’s
taking for the tendons to heal. I am
incredibly impatient when it comes to “things that go wrong with my body.”
Ever since I went back to work, I’ve been on my feet on asbestos-coated
concrete flooring, and I’ve been wearing totally impractical shoes. I have worn the ankle brace a couple of
times, but I haven’t gotten any heel lifts, I haven’t been using heat, ice, nor
ibuprofen, and I haven’t been stretching too much (unless you count the useless
stretching I do when I wake up in the middle of the night so I can make it down
the stairs without my legs giving way).
I finally am tired of waiting to heal. Sure, I was still walking and jogging (and
running a little) during the summer, but I was resting, too. I haven’t put in a decent walk since starting
school three weeks ago, so today I hit the pavement. I only have one planned destination – to walk
by the new youth center that’s being built to see if there is any progress.
I start with the uphill, which lasts for about a mile as
I criss-cross around the outskirts of town and head into the Phillips Academy
campus. I forget that it’s not summer
anymore, and the campus is loaded with students and children of all ages. There are fall sports teams running rampant
along every path and every green space.
I make a wide arc along the campus, retracing my route a few times to
double-back past the bell tower and into Chapel Cemetery. I circle Harriet Beecher Stowe’s gravesite,
cut through the stone wall, and weave my way along some paths I’ve never taken
before, seeing the Stowe house from behind for the first time (though I’ve
lived here for decades).
This is where the path turns downhill, and I mean that
realistically, not philosophically. By
now I’ve finished mile two and am on my way to the youth center building
lot. For months it was nothing but a
hole with a few small backhoes inside and two men working. Today I am shocked to see most of the steel
frame up. It seemed like the work was
dragging along, and now, in just three weeks, there is substantial progress.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that by now, by the end of
mile two, my legs are screaming. I know
I should cut it short and go home, but I can’t.
I want to do 5k before I call it quits.
Besides, it’s so beautiful outside – sunny, warm, perfect. There may not be another day like today until
we New Englanders come out the other side of spring. I perform another criss-cross maneuver in the
park, making a giant X and back-tracking the way I originally came, then I cut
across town.
I cannot make my usual pass through the private school
lot because in the three weeks since I’ve last made this trek, they, too, have
started some kind of construction. My
path is cut-off by a fence and heavy equipment.
I wobble down some stairs and continue my downhill route toward my
street. By now I have surpassed three
miles, and it feels like my tendons are about to snap. I actually get some sharp pains in my right
leg, warning me to get the hell off my poor limbs lest they collapse and leave
me in a heap on the sidewalk by the fire hydrant.
I make it 3.5 miles today. As soon as I get home, I brace up both ankles
and suck down some ibuprofen. What I
really need to do, though, is maybe treat myself the way I was supposed to (and
started to) this summer -- heat, ice,
stretches with the towel, and some ibuprofen with a little more
regularity. Funny thing, if this were a
friend or one of my kids, I’d be reaming them out for not following doctor’s
orders.
But I’m busy. So
busy. And I have to work, be on my feet
all day, wear pretty shoes.
Plus, I am inexplicably impatient when my body
rebels. I know eight weeks is a blip in
the tendon-repairing radar, but I’m so over it already. I just want to get back to my life. I just want to get up in the middle of the
night and not fear that my legs will give out and hurtle me down the stairs to
my death. I want the horrid bulges at
the back of my heels to disappear so I don’t look like I have kankles anymore.
Or maybe I just want to prove to Achilles that I’m more
nimble than he was and keep my heels from being my downfall.
