Rehab

The other day I was in rehab. My right knee was swollen from sports injury and I had to go through exercises to strengthen my knee. There the therapist found out and told me we also had to correct my right toe from perennially pointing out. I was not listening to the therapist however. I was busy gazing at the crowd at this particular facility. Most are in their 70s, men and women of Chinese ancestry, and about half were recovering from stroke.

"Ama," I keep hearing this from the therapists as they call out to their patients, "Wag kang uupo agad. Kakatayo mo lang tapos uupo ka na naman." This particular therapist was already berating the grandma who could not hurdle the stand bar - the simple handle bar where one is to re-learn walking. Assisted by three therapists, one on each side, a third at her front, plus a yaya who were all egging grandma to take a few steps more, she tries for just a second but then plops herself down to the comfort of the wheelchair. Frustrated, the lady therapist makes a face and decides one hour of this is enough, and she moves on to the next patient.

"Ama, we'll try one step at a time, one foot forward and move it up and down ten times, then let's do it the same for the other foot, ok?" . Grandma tries vigorously, and lifts, shakes her left foot. Grumpy therapist is pleased.

Passing in front of me was the stubborn grandma who probably heard what her therapist was asking her to do but was not able to comply. I saw her face as it whizzed by, and see that half of it was not moving. Stroke. My therapist, CJ, who is probably in Canada by now (an immigrant), goes to say hi to her and teases her, "Bakit pag mahjong Ama, ang galing mo, kayang kaya mo. Pag gusto mo kaya mo eh. Pag ayaw mo, ayaw mo." I saw half her face light up. I swear.

Then he comes back to check on my ultrasound. "Yang pasyente ko na yan, sugalera yan kasi nag-MRI sya dati and when we asked her about numbers you can see parts of her brain functioning, she was trying to compute." . I stood there motionless, trying to calculate the amount of therapy sessions these folks have raked up. P600 - P1500 per day for what, three times a week, for what, a year, two years, or the rest of their lives?

My friend Mike tells me that in occupational therapy's rehab sessions, you can more or less see a patient's prognosis right away. He tells me what I saw were perhaps the patient's treatment's post peak period. In other words, there is little more that can be done. The patient wants to do it, but clearly, because of old age, or the extent of the injury, the body no longer can. That probably depressed me, or at least hit me hard. Here we were in a very progressive facility solely for rehabilitation and therapy, in Greenhills, San Juan, surrounded with new equipment, freshly laundered towels and crisp, white uniforms, and yet the place hardly lifted me up. The aura of the facility was light and airy, yet surrounded by mortality, I got a little bit afraid.

First I thought about the health care expense. My medicare does not cover that ripe old age. Most of the Amas there are supported financially by their sons and daughters. That is not typically us. In fact, our society and employment does not cover that old age.

We don't market to the senior citizen. I know nothing about the senior citizen, and who will tell us what to expect when we get to that age? Is there a Dummies for Hitting 60? I sure would like to know what life's like at that point. But then again, we don't really care. We are such a young population that all we listen to are the voice of the youth. The screaming, screeching, photo-loving psychobabble of ...err, the likes of me.

The other day, when it dawned on me that sheesh, even though 40s is the new 30s, and I feel more akin to the 25 age bracket, how come I am thinking more and more about a retirement plan? And when I started going to rehab, I certainly thought about my health. How can I avoid a stroke? How do I make enough money to have medicare after 60 and funding for a retirement?

And so I find myself thinking along these lines at the stroke of midnight on the eve of my birthday.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I am going back to rehab.