I've heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve.
And I've heard of having your head up your ass.
But never have i heard of a heart in your leg.

That said, the physical therapist had my leg a-beatin.

turns out my sacroiliac joint on the right side has somehow rotated back.  aka, the bones that look like an elephant's ear has slipped backwards in a way that makes pretty much the entire lower right side of my body sear in pain.  Anyways, once you guys all stop playing your teeny tiny violins for my sad story ill get to the important part, which is, what the physical therapist did to me. Enjoy.

1. First she says, "now in order to see what's hurt, i'm going to have you do some range of motion tests which will hurt."  They hurt.  Actually, a "range of motion" test is having you stretch in one direction UNTIL it hurts.  So even if I wasn't already in pain, this probably would have sucked.  But i survived.

(i should say that my PT woman was wonderful and even though i am waxing on about the pain she caused me, she was intelligent, insightful, and overall knew what she was doing.)

2.  Heat and stimulation.  Sounds super hot right?  not so much.  First came the electrodes.  Two sets of two electrodes which stuck to my back similar to how you would hook up a car to jump-start it.  As i was making that analogy in my mind, she turned on the electricity and pretty much jump-started my leg and back.  As, and this is really informed conjecture as to what was happening, the electrodes sent a current to their mates, they made the muscles the currents were running across twitch.  And the 2 electrodes alternated, giving the impression of a heart beat (which also alternates its beats--thus the bah-dum bah-dum bah-dum sound) in my leg.  It was pretty awesome.  I was laying there, now with a warm blanket on top of the whole mechanism, thinking of funny interpretations of what was happening to me.  "I found my inner child, and he's in my leg!"  I imagined my leg pumping up like one of those old Reebok sneakers.  Growing to hulk-like proportions.  "You wouldn't like my right leg when its angry!!!"

I digress.  Big time.  Turns out the electricity stops the nerves from firing and hurting so much.  Kinda.

3. This next one was the show stopper.  After they unplugged me, she had me lay on my back with my knees bent.  I then pushed my knees out, her pushing my knees in for resistance.  After 4 of those, we did the opposite, she put her forearm between my knees and i pushed in on it.
And then i hear and feel simultaneously, "POP POP."  I was stunned.  Speechless.  Um . . . um  . . . the pops had come from my inner pelvis, one on either side of my  . . ah . . . junk (groin?).  This is not a location that i am used to feeling pops.  I would go so far as to say i am "pop averse" in that area specifically.  My PT, on the other hand, lit up.  "Did you feel the pop?" she asked.  "Two of them," I replied, tangibly less enthusiastically.  It was like her smile was a reaction to my pain.  "That was your pelvis snapping back into place," she countered.  "oh." "I  . . .  ah  . . . totally knew that."  "Feels great." "Does that mean we're done?"

4.  We are not done.  Next I lie on my back, right leg hanging off the table.  She lifts my left knee and pushes my right leg further down to the ground.  She is literally cranking my leg back into the correct place.  If it didn't feel like a dozen ninjas' throwing stars landing solidly in the small of my back, I would have hugged her.  Manually cranking the body into place is just something that i can dig, i can totally get down with that.  It makes sense.  It's old school.  It hurts a bunch.  And that was it--until tomorrow morning at 9:30am . . .