Physical Therapy Take Home Packet

Nonfiction

Ari Benjamin

Exercise 1: Arm Circles

Start with your hands lying in your lap. Raise your arms to the side as far up as you are comfortable, right before you start to feel pain in your underarms where your tubes are attached. You may use a chair with a supportive back. Preferably, the black wooden one in the dining room, the one you sat in during the Chanukkah party one month previously, surrounded by unknowing family members, and an unknowing daughter. Circle your arms forward five times, then repeat the exercise going backwards. As you start to feel less pain over time, increase the number of rotations to ten. Slowly lower your arms back to your lap. Remember to drain and measure the excretion of your tubes three times a day, while your daughter hides in the living room, afraid to see its content.

Exercise 2: Shoulder Wall Climb

Stand about one foot away from an empty wall. Keep your legs shoulder-width apart. Place your palms flat against the beige wall in front of you, below the HVAC duct, and slowly climb them upwards with your fingers, as if they were spider legs. Climb as far up as you can before you start to feel pain in your incisions. It would be best to have your daughter do this exercise with you, making it a team effort. She will mirror your movements, reminding you to take deep breaths. Climb your fingers back down to their starting position, and repeat these steps five times. Have your daughter count your repetitions in case the pain makes it difficult to track your movements, even though you should not push yourself to a point where you feel pain. She will watch you wince and struggle, and will focus her gaze on your climbing fingers.

Exercise 3: Shoulder Blade Squeeze

Stand up wherever you are comfortable enough. Pinch your shoulder blades together and hold this stretch for ten seconds. Repeat this exercise five times. Remember to take your Oxycodone. Trying to power through the pain will not make you healthier. You have already made your bodily sacrifice, and your cells have stopped dividing. There is no need to punish yourself further. Stick to the ibuprofen if you are stubborn, but your daughter will wish you listened while you stretch your back, grimacing. Pain during physical therapy, only one day post-op, is normal, but her seeing you like this is not. The Oxycodone will make you drowsy, but don’t be afraid to fall asleep. Your daughter will remember how you said you were scared you wouldn’t wake up after the surgery. The scary part is behind you. Take rests in between these exercises.

Exercise 4: Share an Apple with your Daughter

Lie on your reclining chair with an episode of Judge Judy playing on the TV. Have your daughter go to the kitchen and slice an even number of pieces of an apple while Judy scolds the plaintiff. It’s recommended to use the ripe, refrigerated Cosmic Crisp apples from Costco dropped off by your over-attentive mother. Make sure your daughter discards any seeds so they do not grow into a malignant apple tumor. Share a bowl of the apple slices with your daughter, savoring the impossibly sweet nectar of this miracle fruit. Your daughter will be going back to college in a week, so try to do this exercise daily until then. Sharing small moments like these makes things not so bad. It might become a habit, so much so that your daughter will buy Cosmic Crisp apples at her college town’s grocery store, and eat one a day, thinking of you. They won’t taste the same, though–slightly rotten.

Exercise 5: Scar Tissue Massage

Only do this once your stitches dissolve and your drainage tubes are removed. Press two fingers gently to the scar, and rub in circles four times. Repeat this process on all areas of the scar. Your daughter is away at school, watching her phone every second for the official update on your lymph node biopsy, to be 100% certain it hasn’t spread. She will Google what a lymph node is, despite taking two semesters of biology. She will wonder what the next steps would have been. Radiation. Chemotherapy. The smell of morphine and ammonia in the hospital hallway. Repeat those exercises until failure. You were lucky to have caught it so early. Ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, is defined as noninvasive or stage 0 breast cancer. It has been fully removed. She keeps telling herself that. You are lucky to only have scar tissue left to massage.

Exercise 6: Get Your Mammogram

Get a mammogram six to twelve months after the results of your biopsy come back negative. Get the mammogram again. Your annual gynecologist visit may not find a lump. There was no lump the first time. Repeat the mammogram exercise every year. Tell your daughter that she will need to start younger than normal because of the hereditary nature of this cancer. She will nod apprehensively because there is already a genetic risk of alzheimers, diabetes, and now a new apple added to the diseased basket. She will remember her first time getting checked for lumps at the gynecologist, now feeling somewhat distrustful of this practice. She will also feel too young to grasp the possibility that it can happen to anyone. Your mother says the gene is not actually hereditary, but your daughter doesn’t know where she got that information. She will worry from a cautious distance. Repeat this exercise with each generation.