I’ve Got Two

“Is there much difference between the two legs?” I asked my massage therapist today. Since it was my first time having a massage from him, I expected him to be honest.

Despite living in my apartment block for several years, we only met a few months ago when I was discarding my bike, or rather, when my friend Michaela was doing so for me. Given my lower limb amputation, we anticipated it would be a while before I could ride a bike again, as I lacked both balance and strength. As Michaela was leaving the bike as a gift to the universe, he noticed what she was doing and took it off her hands.

Aside from the obvious, he told me that there wasn’t much difference between the two legs in terms of strength. “You could do some more work on your glutes, but couldn’t we all,” he joked.

In Surry Hills, we’re fortunate to have a variety of local massage therapists offering Thai Massage, and I usually visit them purely for relaxation purposes about half a dozen times each year.

However, now that I have a “medical issue,” I thought it would be a good idea to see someone regularly, someone who could become familiar with my body and keep an eye out for any potential issues that might require further attention from my physiotherapist. I informed him of this ahead of today’s first session.

Wednesday is my “health day,” dedicated to medical appointments and such. Besides the massage and a coffee with a friend, I also went for a swim today.

“Swimming” might be an exaggeration, though. More accurately, I splashed around a bit in the hydrotherapy pool at nearby Cook & Phillip. Although I can manage a little bit of backstroke, I don’t yet have the necessary strength to resume freestyle swimming. My physiotherapist and I have discussed how we might approach that, and most likely, I’ll take some swimming lessons.

As I sat in the pool, I glanced over at the legs of the nearby lifeguard. “He has good legs,” I thought to myself. They were nicely shaped, lightly tanned, a nice covering of body hair, and with some muscle but not too much. “I hope he doesn’t think I’m perving on him,” I wondered. Then, I looked down at my own legs. As I did, I noticed the refraction of the light in the water made the difference between my two legs all the more obvious.

I’ve always thought I had quite good legs, and the massage therapist today commented on my calf muscles in particular. As I compared the images, I never felt sad or anything about having lost about a third of my right leg. I just thought, “they’re different.” I still think I have nice legs.

Probably because I was surrounded by school kids at the pool, my mind wandered back to my own childhood and games like hopscotch, the three-legged race, and learning how to stand on one leg. I wondered to what extent these games might have been preparing us for later life and the possibility of losing a limb. And then I remembered that song from my childhood from “Sesame Street” where they sang about having two eyes, two arms etc. They probably don’t sing it anymore, but it has fond memories for me.

I also thought about all those wedding photographs in the period after World War I where the men were often seated while the women stood, reflecting the fact that many men lost their legs in WW1 due to bombs. If you consider history and look around the world, so many people have experienced what I’m experiencing right now, albeit in different circumstances.