Twice a week, I venture down to the East Village for physical therapy appointments at NYU.

Yes, darling readers. I fell down on some pavement over six months ago and I am still not better yet.

There are a bunch of contributing factors to this, mostly my lack of health insurance. After my fall, I played a game called Let Google Tell You What To Do.

Then I sucked it up and went to a clinic and the doctor was all I THINK YOU SHOULD NOT MOVE AROUND TOO MUCH ‘CUZ SOMETHING MIGHT BE TORN UM YEAH MAYBE I DUNNO, GO SEE SOMEONE WHO MIGHT KNOW MORE.

???

So by the time I went to an actual knee/joint specialist doctor guy and by the time I got approved for financial aid (4 weeks later) and then got x-rays (which showed nothing but I still got a bill for $1500 because they messed up the paperwork and NO ONE IS SURPRISED, AMIRITE?) and by the time I got a prescription for physical therapy, it was March.

Fun, right?

So here we are.

Funny that both my father and I fell down and hurt ourselves and are now going to PT several times a week.

My Dad: PT makes me really tired but I’m workin’ hard.

Me: Oh my gosh, me too. Did you take a nap today?

My Dad: I always need a nap after PT.

Me: I think I just always need a nap.

Fin.

The difference between me and my father is that oh, you know, he had, like, a staph infection and almost died and then, uh, had FOUR separate hip surgeries and didn’t get out of a wheelchair for a year so, hmmm, PT is kind of draining for him because he is LEARNING HOW TO WALK AGAIN.

The only reason I nap after PT is because I’m unemployed and I try to nap every day to make up for all those days in a cubicle where I was all UGH I AM SO TIRED AND WISH I COULD NAP.

Fin.

I know, you come here for the fascinating stories of my life. You don’t have to tell me.

I have never done physical therapy before which is surprising considering the very clumsy life I lead. But oh man, I really really love it. I think my physical therapist is a magician. She did some tests on me during my first session and observed the way I moved my joints and how I stood and she practically diagnosed every problem I’ve ever had with my body throughout the course of my entire life, even things that have nothing to do with falling on concrete six months ago.

“I’VE HAD LOWER BACK PAIN FOR YEARS!” I remarked to a friend. “HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT? SHE IS A MAGICIAN! AN HONEST TO GOD MAGICIAN!”

“Or”, said my friend slowly, “she’s a physical therapist.”

RIGHT!

If you are all up in my grill about what exactly happened to me when I fell, I still can’t tell you. Words get thrown around like ‘impingement’ and ‘strain’ and ‘sprain’ and ‘scar tissue’. Alls I know is, I hurt both my knee and my Achilles. It’s not serious. But they still bother me and prevent me from doing certain things without a little pain.

My physical therapist asks me how my pain level is in both the knee and the ankle. I’m supposed to give her a number from 1-10 and if I only speak Spanish, I get to point to a series of happy or sad faces instead. I get jealous of people who speak Spanish so I like to use the happy face chart instead of the numbers.

“Oh,” I say thoughtfully. “Today, my ankle feels only like a slight grimace while the knee feels practically ebullient!”

“So, like a 2?” asks my physical therapist.

I sigh.

“Fine. Yeah.”

My ankle was basically covered in scar tissue because I sat around icing it for a few months like a jackass. So now, I have to work a lot to get it moving and to strengthen it as it’s really weak and tires easily. My knee has a bit of scar tissue in it too in the back and the combination of weak ankle and messed up knee on the same leg has caused the following:

Knots in my IT band
Knots in my calf
A weak quadricep muscle
Tight hamstring
Tendency to roll in or out on my ankle as I don’t have the strength to keep it straight

My advice to all of you is: don’t fall down on pavement while running. Shit gets crazy.

These problems are quite small, don’t get me wrong. They are already getting so much better thanks to a daily combination of strengthening and stretching exercises. I roll my IT band over a foam roller until I cry in agony. I do tons of ballet moves on my ankle, I use one of those stretchy bands to do some resistance work, I get on some weight machines and work out my quad, I stretch out my hamstring, I do a few back handsprings JUST KIDDING THAT LAST ONE WAS A LIE.

(I freaking wish physical therapy involved a back handspring. I’m gonna ask next time I go to see if I can make that happen.)

My favorite part of PT is when my physical therapist has me lay down on a table and then she grabs my ankle and practically tries to break it in half.

Well. That’s what it feels like.

It’s kind of crunchy and jammed up so she tries to loosen it up and I swear, I did not know you could grab someone’s foot and move it around like that without smashing it to pieces. It is the weirdest feeling and feels so so good. She does similar stuff to my knee and at one point, I was all, ARE YOU SURE YOU SHOULD BE JERKING IT AROUND LIKE THAT?

And she was all, um, I am a licensed professional working at NYU and I was all RIGHT! CARRY ON!

My least favorite part of PT is when she tries to massage some scar tissue. She goes crazy on the back of my knee, back of my ankle and parts of my calf and hamstring. To me, a massage sounds fantastic. A PT massage on scar tissue? NOT SO MUCH.

It is excruciating and I lay there trying not to tense my entire body up, trying to focus on breathing and my physical therapist is all I AM SO SORRY ABOUT THIS! And I say “Can you do some work on my upper back?” And she asks “Why? Did you hurt yourself there?” And I’m all “No, I would just prefer a massage up there instead” and she laughs while I lay there writhing around feeling sorry for myself.

“Maybe you could use some scented oils?” I offer. “Play some Enya?”

“Okay, Laura! See you next week!”

I think of my father every time I walk into the PT gym. Basically, it’s always crowded. The first few times I went, I felt like a real jerk because I was all OH MY PRECIOUS ANKLE AND MY PRECIOUS KNEE! I AM SO PRECIOUS! and then all these people are there, working on rotator cuff injuries and bad backs and hip problems and recovering from torn ACLs and who knows what and yikes.

“So many people,” I think to myself.

And it reminded me of how my family’s world burst open when my dad fell and got sick and then couldn’t walk. I never noticed so many people in wheelchairs. Never noticed the struggles other people deal with every single day. There are just so many people.

So I look around and my heart can’t help but break a little at the woman who is too heavy to walk more than a few steps without getting winded. At the man who walks with a bent back, leaning on a cane. And I think of my dad who goes to PT three times a week, trying to get the muscles in his leg working again. Who gets his own scar tissue massaged and how that must hurt.

I look around the room and I think my God, this world is so big and so small at the same time. All of us stretching and strengthening and doing what we can to put our bodies back together.

And I take the elevator down to the street, take out my phone and call my dad to see how he’s doing.

“Just got done with PT,” he says.

“Me too!” I say.

“I feel like a nap!” says my dad.

“Me too!” I say.

And I walk down the street toward the subway, inhaling the scent of spring, the trees on the sidewalks finally in bloom, feeling honored once again to be alive and mobile, feeling content that fifty miles away, my dad is settling back in his favorite chair, glasses perched on his nose, slipping sweetly into dreamland.