The Change: 2

Where Did AE Come From?

 (This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)

I found AE through my husband. Three years ago, he slipped on an icy sidewalk and suffered a dislocated fracture. He needed emergency surgery and they had to put his ankle back together with plates and pins. After two years and an arduous rehab, he still wasn’t entirely happy with how his ankle performed.

Scott doesn’t drive and his main mode of transportation is walking, so he needed his ankle mobility back 100 percent. In addition to physical therapy, he started working with an Iyengar Yoga instructor who helped him bring his ankle back almost to its original state. But he hit a plateau and that brought him to AE.

Others in his yoga classes had seen AE and swore by her. These were men and women who did rigorous yoga, 5-7 days per week, and when they hit a place where their bodies were “stuck” – unable to bend or stretch to the degree that they should be able to, given their training and practice – they’d go to AE and her body work would help them.

After a few sessions with AE, they all were better.  One guy even passed a kidney stone the day after his first session with her. For the record, this was kind of a deterrent for me; I didn’t want to pass any kidney stones of my own. But I’d been having several inexplicable physical problems for the last many years, the most recent of which was a pain in my knee that no one could really make heads or tails of.

Of course, when I say “no one,” I mean those in my small cadre of healers.  My beloved chiropractor/acupuncturist.  My internist. My physical therapist.

I could have gone to an orthopedist (what some of my friends would call “a real doctor”) but I was afraid that he’d say I needed surgery and I wasn’t willing to do that.

Also, when I say “pain,” that’s a bit of an overstatement. This particular malady was more of an annoyance than a pain. I couldn’t sit cross-legged on the floor. And if I dropped down into a full squat, I would have a hard time getting back up again. These are two activities that a middle-aged woman should probably consider foregoing anyway.
 
In fact, the only time my knee actually “hurt” was when I put on a pair of pants. There was something about that movement – bending my leg with my knee pointing outward – that my body did not like.  The “pain” would last for only a few seconds. It wasn’t debilitating, and as soon as my pants were on, I felt fine.

I’m not sure why I felt so compelled to address my knee problem. Maybe because I felt nervous playing tennis with it feeling so vulnerable. Maybe because it seemed like a harbinger of growing old. Whatever the reason, I got it firmly planted in my head that AE would be the one to fix it.

“Do you think I should see AE about my knee?” I said to Scott one day last spring.

“Definitely,” he said. “She says she can fix anything except broken bones and death.”

So I called and made an appointment.

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