What I won’t be giving this year
As you gather around the Christmas tree this Tuesday and revel in the warmth and cast aside a year’s worth of animus and grievances, you may wonder to yourself as I often do, what presents would the profession of physiotherapists give to one another, and what would they not give?
The top two presents I WON’T be giving are inspired by this year’s home time ritual — The Chase.
A wonderful test of my cerebral cortex and interspersed with convincing ads that reveal to me “the secret is in the . . . ” and in this veritable feast of health and wellness marketing, several life changing devices, where actors in Oscar nominated performances experience relief or wellness that simply must be attained.
1. The Handheld Electro Zapping pain relief liberator (HEZ)
There are gadgets that do actually deliver electrically induced analgesia, however they are more convenient in that they deliver the treatment automatically via a battery, with intensity controls, pulse frequency dials and pulse width controls. You could set up this TENS machine and leave it running for hours, or you could buy a small stick with a microswitch, that creates the same piezo-electric effect as your gas match or barbecue ignition, and press it a few thousand times at a fraction of the output of the TENS machine (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation).
You can get a TENS machine for less than the Handheld Electric Zapper, and you don’t have to look as goofy as the actors on TV. To stimulate endorphines with the HEZ, you’d have to go non-stop for more than 40 mins, and that is assuming the precise parameters are at play. It would be like navigating the world’s longest tunnel with a dynamo torch in a power cut — 57km long. You would get some version of repetitive strain, and so we physios are honour bound not to create patients with our presents. I got to feel the output of one this year from a kind HEZ purchaser.
It felt like setting 1/10 on a TENS. No physio will be gifting a Handheld Electric Zapper this year, even if they acted now to get a free second one. In fact Consumer NZ and the Australian Shonky awards speak authoritatively on this kind of Christmas goody.
2. The Resurrected 1990s Surplus Treadmill
Nothing says “right now” better than something that looks as retro as the 90s and is in fact no more advanced than 1996 is on 1995. With an old school LED display as seen in calculators, the Wanganui Computer and time bombs from MacGyver, you can let toned actors frog march you to your wallet and surrender good sense to the appalling terms and conditions. With a dedicated slot that is actually a rectangular plastic recess to put your iPhone, iWalkman cassette player or iBoombox you can rock to your tunes as you easily roll this one away into your cupboard of doomed purchases. If you want to walk, go outside for free, and trade nature for the indoors. Generate 1.52 horsepower on the Durie Hill Steps rather than the 1 HP on the narrow strip of black PVC that will quickly bore you to tears. A physio will not be gifting a treadmill given the exorbitant price, but might give vouchers that enable the recipient to go outside and walk around the beautiful parks and footpaths of our wonderful city. Yes, you may add “you can’t be mugged on a treadmill”, but given I walk a lot, I have yet to be mugged in my previous 47 years.
So what would physios gift, to impact the lives of the gift getters?
1. I would give a book that I often lend my clients: Painful Yarns by Lorimer Moseley. Moseley is a physiotherapist and now Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of South Australia. He is a gifted communicator with humour as the most effective teaching tool. Painful Yarns has you laughing your way to an understanding of why you hurt, be it in the acute stage of injury through to persistent or chronic pain. Two clients have directly attributed a quantum shift in their pain experience from a few of the chapters in the book, such as “Dusty’s Bum Crack”, “Crazy Kevin” or “Hammerhead Shark”.
2. A device I have been enjoying lately is my chin up bar which in most homes cantilevers into a doorway. In my last article I spoke of the value of building up muscle fibres with overload exercise. In that spirit I decided to challenge myself to this kind of work, and have lifted my own full body weight up to 9 reps, which started out at 2. An even cheaper gift is to draw a square on the ground with a piece of chalk, and dedicate that spot to press-ups. Nearly free, and probably I’d be accused of being stingy, but if the receiver of the gift actually did the press-ups, over time they would be so much healthier.
3. Dark Chocolate: over 85 per cent. So good and not preachy or message laden.
4. Two quality tennis balls in a length of tubigrip or tubular bandage: they sit between the shoulder blades and the wall, then you bend the knees up and down — aaah, blissful massage in an area you can’t reach. Lie, lean or loaf on them, a home made pressie that never fails to please.
It is a shame that Christmas has become a vehicle for getting. It irks me that there is an obligation to buy gifts, mostly from retailers who count on this season to make the spirits bright. The origin of the event is built into the name, and it represents a gift that comes with no reciprocation, no exchange cards, no unfairness.
Merry Christmas and thank you to all the readers who bless me with feedback and thanks to Paul for the privilege to write.