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5 May 2005
The Runner's Knee
For the last one month, I have been attending physical therapy sessions for my knee. The hospital is run by the Huntington Orthopedic Surgical Medical Group and adjoins the main Huntington Hospital off Fair Oaks in Pasadena. My sessions are usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoons. The clinic is mainly run by a middle-aged Chinese-American woman whose accent puts her more Chinese than American and another younger nurse of Asian origin with a pleasant face but a guffaw for a laugh. Now that I have attended seven sessions at the clinic, there is a growing sense of camaraderie and brotherhood that I invisibly envision with the people who come with problems of their own. With nothing better to do as I carry out the stretch-and-strengthen exercises whereupon the knee is "tensed", I pick up sundry bits of amusing conversation.Two middle-aged women, one a red-haired nurse and the other her afflicted patient, talk of their common ailments and no sooner than that happens the nurse and patient turn into women about to confide in each other recipes and carpet-cleaning tips. I share space with a minister who derives pleasure in announcing his overdiligence in his exercises, a rich Italian with two homes and a pool in one of them, a Canadian student presumably at Pasadena City College and a part-time karate teacher who works shipping books by day.
While I move from pressing the knee against the ground, to lifting it up still "tensed", then using 1,2,3 pounds of weight, then flexing it over a roller, squishing a yellow and curiously "Made in Italy" bag and climbing one-steps right leg up and left leg down. And then onto the next session.
