the healer

The two last weeks have been intersprinkled with little appointments left and right, hardly a night to myself, no time to go grocery shopping, and I don't have a bread maker anymore. I went to Germany for all of two days. Imagine a hurried weekend sandwiched between two festinate weeks. Next week shall be calmer. Alain has let me free.

Astute readers of this blog will remember Alain as my kinesitherapist. A month after I had slashed a tendon in my left thumb and shortly after my cast had been removed, I was looking to act on a referral I had got from the surgeon. I imagined some lovely lady fresh from wherever kinesitherapists go to school with soft hands, a pretty face and a radiating smile taking good care of me.

Reason clashed with this vision. Beauty is no valid criterion for picking a therapist. The only thing that matters is proximity. I compiled a list of practices ordered by increasing distance from my apartment. Alain was the first one I called and he had room. The walk over is about a minute.

The previous paragraphs indicates that I didn't go with high expectations. What good could it really do? My first visit augmented my doubts. A few cents worth of electricity pulsating through my hand and fifteen minutes of perfunctory massage were not gonna close the cut that was still gaping in the middle of a double scar.

Or were they? I like the scientific approach, and in this case I have no blank to compare my results to, but the therapy worked wonders. Five sessions into the 20-session program, the scar had receded into the surrounding skin and only five of the 14 holes left by the surgeon's needle remained visible. I started to be able to move my thumb normally. Despite being profoundly skeptical at first, I benefited enormously from this therapy. You can rule out the placebo effect. Alain knows his job.

On Tuesday, he decided this would be my last week. We haven't run the full course recommended by the surgeon, but my hand works like new, and I've got other things to do. Like running through life in a rush.