My Enemy, My Friend

Exercise.

I have a hate-tolerate relationship with it that has never approached anything like love.

The only B I got in junior high was in P.E. And I always failed the Presidential Fitness tests we were subjected to. But did I get a remedial class or any investigation into why I wasn't good at it? Nope. Just teasing (and bad grades), though mostly minor.

And now, decades later, exercise, I believe, has led to at least three injuries. In truth, I should admit that I probably began each exercise unprepared for it, even though I was under doctor's orders. When I took up walking in the summer of 2007 as part of my WW regimen I threw out my back a week later and only realized after I was diagnosed with a significant leg differential, that it was probably the burst of exercise that put my muscles over the edge. Then this summer, when I began swimming, my thoracic gave out within about a week. This led to the discovery of scoliosis and my two curves, one lumbar, one thoracic. I didn't put two and two together until much later because everyone said you couldn't get hurt swimming. Then, I replaced swimming with an elliptical, and while obviously other things were involved, I can't separate the beginning of my use of my elliptical with the herniation of my disc. Yep, less than a week later.

Of course, every doctor and PT I've seen says exercise is the key to back recovery because I need to strengthen my core (after diastasis, hernias, c-section). So I've been walking. Everyone tells me I can't get hurt just walking (now that I have orthotics and a lift, of course). That it might be the only thing I can do with my overly sensitive musco-skeletal system. So I have been walking since the second week of September. Long past my one-week-of-exercise-injury track record. They might be right this time.

Let's hope. Because I'm back on my elliptical a little each day--no more than 5 minutes--trying to gear up for the winter when I won't be walking outside in the snow.

And it's been about a week . . . .