Gratitude

I've been trudging to physical therapy twice a week, every week, for almost four months now, and I've come to see it as a burden, something that hurts, that takes a lot of time, that I don't want to do. My therapist is wonderful, but the very fact of the amount of time it's taking, and the slowness of my progress, has been frustrating.

 

Today, it struck me that I'm really looking at it the wrong way. What I ought to feel is grateful: grateful that I had the time and money to go on the ski trip in the first place; grateful that when I got hurt, I lucked into finding a good surgeon; grateful that my insurance company has picked up the tab for what was an expensive surgery and physical therapy that has stretched far longer than expected. I'm lucky to live in a first-world country where I have access to medical care, where a bad injury I sustained won't cripple me for life.

 

This sculpture is in the lobby of the place I go to see the surgeon and have physical therapy. It was done by Tim Foley. Every day when I come out of physical therapy I do a double-take because the shapes of the surgeons are so life-like, standing so still in the silent lobby. The first time I saw it I got the willies, knowing that a probe like that was going to go right into my own, non-wooden, full-of-nerves shoulder. But it doesn't creep me out anymore. The sculpted surgeons are performing their art--the art of healing.

 

I like this sculpture a lot.

Done