Looks Like Fun, Doesn’t It? (It’s the Devil in Disguise)

What IS that thing? Is it a virtual reality booth? A virtual skydiving booth? A video game? It is, in essence, all three of those things, except that it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That booth right there is a torture device for people with balance disorders, like myself. It is the bane of my existence. It is a torture rack straight out of the movie “Saw”. It is the machine that is supposed to be helping my brain, eyes, and ears communicate with one another properly.

First, you are strapped into a harness, much like the ones that people wear when skydiving, and then you step up into the booth and are attached to the two straps dangling from the booth’s ceiling. Next, you’re feet are strategically placed on metal footplates as you face a small television screen in the wall of the booth in front of you. Once you are placed in the perfect position, that’s when the real “fun” begins.

Now it’s the physical therapist’s turn to have a little bit of masochistic fun (I mean that in a humorous way, of course). On the computer screen to the right of the booth, the therapist begins an exercise where he or she chooses at what percentage the walls move (it ranges from 20% - 200%), the higher the number, the more the wall moves. The goal of the patient strapped into the torture chamber is to keep their little mini-me inside of a box in the center of the T.V screen. I am achieving an 80% success rate, but I am at the lowest setting possible: 20%. To the normal person’s eyes, it doesn’t even look like the wall is moving, but to me, IT’S MOVING.

After that little gem of an exercise it’s on to the footplate. Again, the physical therapist has the option of picking a difficulty level of 20% - 200%; and, again, I am at 20%. Both of these exercises are supposed to last 2 minutes or more, but because I haven been so ill and weak from lack of food, I have lasted, at the longest, 45 seconds.

The next exercise is having the footplate suddenly tilt forward or backward and my goal is to keep that blasted mini-me in the center box. That one I TOTALLY fail because I cannot even keep my balance on a flat surface that isn’t moving! I do slightly better when it tips forward, maybe it’s because of my big butt in the back that’s balancing me out or something, but I tend to handle that better than when it drops from under my heals.

The last exercise in this lovely little booth of wonders is having BOTH the wall and the footplate move at the same time. My therapist warned me that it would be like standing up during a 7.2 earthquake. Well, when that bad boy started shaking, I was gone! My therapist had to hold me to prevent me from falling out of the booth.

I know that none of this sounds the least bit difficult, let alone tiring; but by the time I am finished I am sweating up a storm and so tuckered out that I sometimes wonder if I’ll even make it to the car! Generally, on the days when I have physical therapy, I get home and completely pass out on the couch. I mean, we’re talking, dead-to-the-world, snoring, drooling, the whole nine yards.

Anyway, there’s a picture and a little explanation of what physical therapy is like for me.