Let's get physical and mental to make these exercises work

For going on six months now, a group of women have been twisting my arm and giving me the cold shoulder, alternately dispensing both pain and hope.

Granted, that's pretty much been my history with women. And while it may describe a lot of marriages, in this case the women involved are the therapists who inhabit Chet Clodfelter's Greencastle Physical Therapy operation.

While they may sound like torturous Amazons from the Planet PT with a penchant for manipulating arms and rotator cuffs and shouldering burdens of pain and suffering, they are angels in disguise.

And it is time they are celebrated.

October has been Physical Therapy Month, and as it is about to come to an end, so is my nearly six-month run at rehabbing a torn rotator cuff, shredded biceps tendon and rebuilt shoulder.

In the intervening months since surgery, it seems as though every other person I've talked to has endured a similar operation. Or is recovering from some ailment that has sent them to physical therapy.

Everywhere I look there's somebody with a sling (thankfully mine is long gone) on their arm or a boot on their foot. A beautiful woman even showed me the Achilles' tendon scar on the back of her leg in the middle of Walmart the other day.

For crying out loud, the neighbor's dog has even gone through it. Poor little Biscuit hurt his leg recently and has been limping around the yard across the street. And yes, I've taken to calling him Limp Biscuit.

But trust me, I could never have hung on this long on the road to recovery if it weren't for Chet and his Angels (move over, Charlie), especially Lesley Woodruff, who has poked me in all the right places, prodding steady progress toward a return to normalcy (whatever that is).

After Friday it appears I will be leaving Planet PT, as I like to call it, behind. Since May it's been basically my second home (or technically third behind the Banner Graphic office and my Hilltop Lane abode).

But I believe I've left behind a little legacy of humor, which has helped me cope with rehab frustrations along the way. After all, I think it was Reader's Digest -- if not Nietzsche or Sartre -- who coined the phrase "laughter is the best medicine."

So just to keep my sanity, I routinely have renamed the exercises the therapists prescribe. The first was one where I used my fingers to meticulously climb up the wall, stretching out the arm and shoulder along the way.

Instantly (and so naturally it seemed) it became "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." No rain, no spout, no washing the spider out, but you get the picture.

Meanwhile, another exercise involving reaching out both arms in a large, looping 45-degree-angle embrace proved initially painful. It was soon dubbed "Hugging the Bear."

Another maneuver had me starting with my left hand down at my right side, raising it to point skyward as it crossed my torso to the left.

That evolved into "The John Travolta." But hey, stayin' alive has been my mission since that May 22 surgery.

One day Lesley moved my workout to a nearby counter, deposited a couple hand weights in front of me and opened the nearest cupboard.

I was told to hold the weight vertically in my left hand and tap the counter, then touch it the bottom shelf, then the next shelf and on and on.

"So you want me to put the soup away?" became my way of understanding the procedure. As heavier weights ensued, they became Chunky Soup.

Likewise, efforts on one of the many weight machines, pulling down from the top while seated on a bench in front of the contraption, could only translate to "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" (please remain seated during the ride).

And when the ice pack came out at the end of each hour it was always time for Vanilla Ice and "Ice, Ice, Baby."

Then, as as I daydreamed Monday while executing another round of exercises in front of the mirror, therapist Bridgette walked past, keeping pace with her rehab client who shuffled along with legs bound by an elastic band.

Noting that I stopped swinging the two-pound hand weights skyward as they passed, Bridgette turned and smiled.

"Don't hug her," she said, nodding in the direction of her patient. "She's not a bear."

Ah, humor. Mission accomplished.