This was going to be a post about physical therapy and my early experiences trying to regain some strength, coordination and balance at a local outpatient Rehabilitation Hospital.

It was going to talk about how overwhelming it is to realize how very little movement it takes to physically exhaust me. It was going to tell you how the babiest of baby steps crushes me for the rest of the day. This post was going to be about how my health insurance provides a generous 30 sessions of PT in any one year but how I’d likely need more like 300 before I would be deemed safe for outside life.

But now this post has to be about how I had a really great PT session this morning but when I had almost made it back to my car in the very first handicapped parking spot in the parking lot (yay! I saved about 30 steps by scoring this primo location) I somehow lost my balance, fell over backwards (on to that spot up there circled in red) and fell flat on my damn back. Then it will explain how a perfect stranger with kindness in her heart sprinted over to me, while I was performing my very best turtle-on-her-back impression in the middle of the gravel and mud area on the road, to help get me back on my feet again.

All of those things happened today before noon.

Physical therapy is sobering, y’all, and I thought that before I fell in the parking lot today. My legs get tired so fast. At my first two sessions I had to be wheeled back to my car by my therapist because my legs were shot after a few tiny exercises and less than 500 steps.

This experience is forcing me to acknowledge how I need to start committing myself to getting my poor, sad, useless body to move more. It has to be a priority. I can’t avoid it any longer. I am a menace to myself and others just trying to do normal-people-things. And I’m talking about the out of shape people. Not the super fit people. Helping my body get stronger cannot be the last thing on my list anymore. I might have to prioritize the effort for a while. I might not be able to expend all of my pathetic amounts of energy to get myself into my office more often. I have to get to PT. Or a gym. Or both.

I have had the rudest of awakenings possible, thanks to my first experience with physical therapy. Trying to ignore my broken body is clearly not working. Like most things in life, I had to learn this the hard way but I did finally learn.

Today we added some new things to my exercise menu beyond the easiest of pelvic tilts, bridges and side leg lifts. We did some basic yoga poses and stretches that helped my eternally spastic muscles feel slightly less rigid. The best part about PT is that they have these giant tables with mats on them that stand about a foot and a half off the ground so that patients are not forced to get up and down off the floor over and over again. If you have MS, you need no explanation for how hard it is to accomplish this feat with stiff, spastic muscles that aren’t getting the right signals from your central nervous system. It’s enough to keep a girl off the floor, and hence, not exercising. Imaging something so brilliant! I am seriously considering the idea of buying one of these contraptions and putting it in my guest room. I like the elevated mat that much.

Then we did some balance work on a machine that blew my mind. You stand on a platform and attempt to trace a path on a video screen from a series of circles back to the center circle with your body weight, by shifting in various directions. Yeah. Mind blowing. It’s from a company called Biodex and again, I want it in my home. We did some standing leg lifts after that. Then I pedaled a bike-like contraption for 5 minutes. We rested a ton in between all of these exercises. We learned that after the first two sessions when I had to be wheeled back to my car. We may have learned, today, that we need to take even more rests?

I’m nothing if not dramatic at making my point.

Once I got back to my feet with the help of the kind stranger, I had only a few steps to get to my car. I fell about three feet from my damn car, friends. The picture was taken from the driver’s seat. Good gravy. I shock even myself.

Of course, I was wearing one of my favorite backpacks when I fell. I stopped carrying purses a while ago when I realized carrying anything on one side of my body threw me completely off balance. It made me sad to give up bags, but then I got over it when I met Karl.

Karl is also pictured above and he was my first backpack, made for me especially by Karl Lagerfeld. Ok. I bought it from Net-a-Porter, but it felt like he made this backpack just for me. I’ve since acquired several backpacks because well, I’m me, and that’s what I tend to do but I’ve never fallen in love with any of those backpacks like I fell for Karl. I’ve tried to replace him. I’ve tried and failed. When his straps started to fray, I lovingly took him to my local shoemaker to have him mended. Karl isn’t big enough to carry my computer in, so he’s relegated to non-work-day use, but he proved his mettle to me today because when I fell gracelessly flat on my back (somehow) defying all physical laws of nature, Karl cushioned my fall.

He jumped right in and doubled as an air bag and prevented me from bashing the back of my skull on that muddy, gravelly broken asphalt. Now, he was entirely useless when it came to helping me get back up again, but that didn’t bother me. I had a fully intact skull. Beggars can’t be choosers, as my mother used to always remind me.

Karl Lagerfeld saved my damn life, people. Never let anyone tell you that man is only good at dressing oddly and designing couture fashion. Karl Lagerfeld is my goddamned guardian angel, I will never let anyone convince me otherwise.

The kind stranger helped me brush the mud and gravel off of my butt but there was no helping Karl in that moment. I didn’t have the nerve to prove my shallow character to this kind woman by attempting to dust Karl off before I sent her on her way. I sat in my car, kind of shaking a little, snapping a few handy shots for use in this very blog post (and in the potential civil suit that may result when I wake up tomorrow with even more brain damage than I already have) but I needed to settle down.

I looked up and saw adorable little Melissa, my physical therapist, jogging toward my car in tears. Apparently the news of Karl’s heroics reached her all the way back in the Outpatient Clinic.

“Oh my god, Beth, are you OK? I feel like this was my fault! Are you hurt? Are you bleeding? Please come back in and let us take a look at you.”

Of course, I shushed her and said the only thing that was truly hurt was my pride for rolling around in public like a turtle on its back completely unable to right myself. I did reassure her that I used my “how to get up from the floor” training we practiced in our last session, because I really did. The only problem was the tiny detail that crawling on your hands and knees on gravel is not terribly practical or fun. There was nothing close enough to me that was also high enough to get me on my feet. Except for that sweet woman, of course. She helped me. I mean, thank the universe for the kindness of strangers! Without her, I might still be rolling around out there.

Which would have been impractical because I had more appointments to get to. The most important of which was my appointment this evening to get my eye brows touched up. Yes, folks, you read that right. I am a woman who has given up on practically every vestige of the frivolous person I used to be. I can’t remember the last time I had makeup on (I should check Instagram because I’m sure I documented it). I wear the same black yoga pants and tank top each and every day when I’m not at work. When I am at work, I wear the fancy version of my outfit, which is a lot like the home version but probably more expensive and possibly of better quality.

I’m sick of looking at myself in this get up or some variation thereof but when I sometimes try to buck habit and toss on a dress or something, I tend to have an existential crisis and wind up crying myself to sleep, but that’s a post for another day. For today, I was committed to stumbling my ass in my comfy uniform and bedhead to the salon to get my microbladed eyebrows touched up. I didn’t care if I had to crawl into the salon on my knees.

This is how I know that somewhere in there, I am still me. After my experience yesterday with the dress and the crying and the horrifying existential crisis that lasted until I finally exhausted myself to sleep from the sheer effort it takes to sob that hard, it helped me to realize that there actually still are some things from Old Me that New Me is refusing to give up.

So what if it happens to be my passionate commitment to brows on point. Or backpacks designed by fancy fashion folk. These are not the best parts of Old Me, to be certain, but I’m glad they’re still there. You can only lose so much of yourself before you start to wonder if you’ll ever make it back to feeling OK again.

Thanks to Karl Lagerfeld, I have a relatively unbroken body. And I also got to the rest of my medical appointments AND I also have perfect eyebrows. The rest of me might be going to hell in a hand basket but it’s good to be grateful for what you still have, right?

Karl is a bit roughed up from his adventures this morning, but after a quick wipe with a soft cloth, he is none the worse for the heroic deeds he performed today. I may take him back to the shoemaker to get some additional love to get his buttery soft leather back into tip-top shape.

It seems appropriate for a hero like him.