Hamstrung with Hamstrings
Two years ago,
on December 29, 2010 at approximately 1:26 p.m., I entered a state disbelief.
Total befuddlement. See, I was doing my daily stretches, working on my famously
tighter-than-a pair-of jeans-three-sizes-too-small hamstrings, when I
accidentally grabbed my toes. I know, MY TOES. Huh? What the hell was going
on!? Gymnasts grab their toes. Yogi masters grab their toes. Chinese acrobats
who specialize in contortionism grab their toes. People with MS don’t grab
their toes. I have the flexibility of Melba toast. Reaching my kneecaps and
maybe—maybe— touching my shins (if I cheated and bent my knees) was my elasticity
Everest. Seriously, the last time I touched my toes was back in seventh grade
as a yellow belt in Taekwondo. And I did that only because my instructor was a
7th degree black belt championship fighter with a short fuse for kids who
weren’t limber. But there I was, at the age of 42 with multiple
sclerosis-induced spasticity my daily enemy, wrapping my hands around my feet.
Either I had just torn my hamstring off my femur necessitating urgent surgery
and months of rehab… or my 15- to 30-minute daily stretching routine was
actually working. I’ll be danged, it was the latter.
While
stretching has always been a part of my regular exercise, rarely was it a
focus. That all changed when in 2009 my spasticity went into a higher gear. So
for months I had been far more faithful about getting in at least one
stretching session per day in the hopes that maybe I would be able to hold off
taking Baclofen and other anti-spasticity drugs. Heck, I’d been preaching the
benefits of stretching for years on ActiveMSers as the single most important
exercise you can do for your MS. It was about time I got off my pulpit and
practiced. The gains were at first imperceptible. I never noticed that I could
reach my shins without cheating. Then my ankles. While my painful spasticity
had faded, I never put two-and-two together. And then… and then, I touched my
toes.
Originally published December
29th, 2010. Edited for clarity.
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