Carrol Vertrees: Laughter, friendship help rehab process

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Carrol Vertrees

Updated: December 14, 2011 8:08AM

I don’t know how other old houses feel when they are being rehabilitated. Appreciative, maybe, knowing that special people care for them.

That’s how I feel about the rehab place where smiling people are helping me get better after surgery.

It is going well, but there was a day in the beginning that I hope nobody puts into the record — not a day that will live in infamy but embarrassing anyway. I FLUNKED TREADMILL. Well, not exactly a flunk, but I couldn’t get the hang of it, walking and not going anywhere.

So they assigned me to walk around the little track — for 10 minutes. I like that, because I am able to walk at reasonable speed and pass some slower folks — young people, some still in their 70s.

Sure enough, this helpful lady said “For your age, you are doing wonderfully.” I felt proud. At my age, a guy needs every stitch of pride he can get.

I remember the young girl in the ER room saying: “You are HOW old?”

This is not about only me, though. It is about us — people being rehabbed and the people who guide us.

There is more to this than medicine and walking around a track. I discovered in the hospital and now in rehab that some great healing prescriptions cannot be bought at a pharmacy.

I don’t know their patented names, but let us call them Laughter and Friendships.

Some laughter is quiet — maybe more a smile, but it sends a healing message. I have been touched by it, even lifted. It is a contagious thing, and I see others in my group feel it. Our spirits and our minds need rehabbing sometimes and I am lucky to be here in a healing atmosphere three mornings a week. I can sense when laughter or smiles are artificial. We are being treated with the real stuff. We are among friends. That is a comfort.

Perspectives take a shot when we have delicate surgery. Mine changed again in rehab when I met a fellow who needs a lung transplant. I believe he feels comforted, too, in the friendly rehab atmosphere.

The friendship thing takes me back several years when my college roomie, after a seven-hour bypass surgery, wrote: “I don’t know when I have felt better about being alive.”

Writing about that, I said, “I hope he is around if I ever need encouragement, but he already has taught me important truths about the human spirit.” I remember that. It was spring, and he wrote: “I hope you are having spring, too, inside as well as outside.” He is still around, and I am glad.

Friendships are indeed good medicine, new or old. And friendly smiles are frozen in our memories.

I wrote then that “I marvel at the determination and toughness of patients like my old friend. He has not been touched by the anger or depression that sometimes comes with delicate surgery.”

Even I can be prophetic. I feel that kind of atmosphere in my surgery and rehab experiences.

My heart rate jumps around, though, when I worry about my treadmill failure becoming public. A guy wants to protect his reputation, you know.