PT

pg 136

It was now, in one of thos ironies of hospital life, that a physical therapist showed up. Andrew weighed 154, having lost over 30 pounds, and was weaker and more incapacitated than ever, yet there appeared on the threshold an attractive, blond, muscular man looking like a yuppie Tarzan, bearing the hospital equivalent of a barbell- a small metal triangle that hangs on the bar over the patient's head. He was all ready to put Andrew through his paces. Unlike psychotherapy, physical therapy is at least on the menu of the hospital, bit it is honored more in the breach than the observance. Every 3 or 4 days, an overworked young mand or woman will show up, offer a half hour of instruction, leave the patient with a sheet of exercises to be followed, come back in a day, or a week, or a month. Exercise and movement of any kind are immensely important, a preventive measure against bedsores, pneumonia, and other infections to which patients in their debilitated state are especially susceptible. ...

They talked in such dire tones of muscles atrophying that I was afraid that even if he got well, his head would plop forward permanently. He could barely  talk, much less flex his muscles, when this blond gym teacher, fairly glowing with health and optimism, showed up, a huge grin on his face and the breathlessly winning manner of one who is constantly having to apologize for missed rendezvous with disappointed patients. ...

137

Once the triangle was installed on the longitudinal pole overhead, he took a fancy to it: he would grab hold of it, pull heroically a few times, and then stop, exhausted, his agitated mind on to something else.

207

Andrew had gained 12 pounds now, and was up to 142. But the weariness was mind-boggling: he couldn't read at all, to watch television was an effort, and sitting in the chair remained an inhuman ordeal. It was also one to which he did not submit with grace. As usual, he was not responding enthusiastically to physical therapy. His laziness was by now legendary, and his evasions had become a sore point with the nurses.

228

He was certainly not what a doctor or physical therapist would have desired at the Rusk Institute for Rehabilitation. His face would never grace one of the institutional brochures on which were pictured gung-ho patients, smiling bravely, struggling gallantly to walk.  Andrew was surrounded by go-getters and overachievers, by people who were truly courageous or at least tried to get brownie points by seeming so, and his lack of camp spirit stuck out like a sore thumb.