Physical Therapy-Relearning the Fundamentals
“My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don’t regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.”
Two weeks post surgery
6 weeks ago I had surgery to repair a torn tendon in my ankle. The surgeon told me that if the surgery went poorly I would recover to the level that I was at before surgery with my running and athletic goals. If things went well I would hopefully get back to the level I was at before the tendon tore. I had to spend a lot of time not doing anything following the surgery so that I wouldn't mess up the surgical site by putting any weight on the ankle and the tendon itself.
Over the past few weeks I have begun physical therapy. When I was non weight bearing, aside from some pain from the surgery everything felt pretty normal. It wasn't until I began walking and doing the physical therapy that I noticed: everything is in a different spot. I became exponentially more aware of where every muscle and tendon was in my foot which for the most part I had never thought of. My left foot still feels normal and my right foot is becoming more normal as time goes on.
This journey to relearn how to walk, how to balance, how to be a functioning biped has led me to refocus my musical journey as well. It has reminded me how often I put the bassoon to my face and think everything feels fine, so no worries. It reminded me how often I lack awareness of the individual muscles in my face and how they interact with each other. I have spent more time on longtones, scales and scale studies than I have in the past year.
6 weeks post surgery
I am still not back to 100% stability and mobility in my ankle. I am still walking with a cane and building flexibility. I have a lot of strength to rebuild before I can think of running again. I know I will get there.
I know that as a bassoonist, I will keep these photos handy and I'll always have that scar on my ankle. I know that every time I see it, it will be a physical reminder of the necessity of fundamentals and of how important it is to be fully aware of my strengths and weaknesses and working on those weaknesses to make each one of those a new strength. It's possible that I will forget from time to time, or that I will get so busy that I am tempted to push the fundamentals to the side, I've done it before, but I hope that it remains a temptation rather than becoming reality.