In college if you sustained any injury to any part of your lower body, really anything from the waist down, you were assured that an ice bath was in your future. The trainers liked to call it ‘the whirlpool’ which makes it sound at worst benign and at best heavenly after a hard practice in the Williamsburg heat. They’re liars. It is pretty much the opposite of benign and heavenly. I suppose they’re not total liars, it was in fact a whirlpool. It was a large metal tub about 5 feet in length, 3 feet in width, and 4 feet deep. At one end was a wee little outboard motor. It looked like maybe it was a motor to Barbie and Ken’s vacation boat. But, as advertised, it whirled.
The problem was what it whirled, ice water. I don’t mean ice water as in cold water. I mean ice and water. The trainers would fill the tub a quarter full with ice cubes and a quarter full with cold water. The other half of the tub was filled with your body. On good days you got the “whirlpool” all to yourself but most days you had to share it with some other athlete damaged from the waist down. You might think it would be nice to have someone with you in the tub-o-misery but it wasn’t. It really wasn’t big enough for two bodies so all your damaged frozen parts were bent into even more uncomfortable positions. And its not like you were going to chat. The instant you toes touched the surface of the water your jaw clenched shut, your lungs expelled every last atom of O2, and your brain slipped into a childlike coma only able to generate moans and thoughts like ‘mama, mama’.
It actually took superhuman strength to lower yourself into the “whirlpool” b/c it went against every single solitary survival instinct you’d ever had in your whole life. The first few times I had to do it I kept looking over at the trainer with desperate pleading eyes, thinking “Really? Really, you think this is a good idea? Have you felt this water? Its super cold, like arctic cold, like ice burg cold, like I am going to die of hypothermia cold. Where are the penguins?” But alas, they had no sympathy. Some b/c they were evil and sadistic and some b/c they knew what you had a hard time wrapping your popsicled brain around, that this really would heal you.
The “lucky ones” only had to submerge to the upper calf, those were the ankle/Achilles/calf cramp folks. If you were a knee injury you were in up to mid thigh. Which sucked but you got to stop just short of that place on your body, you know where it is, that makes your head explode if you put it in cold water. If you were a quad, a hip, or a groin, you were toast b/c you had to submerge to your belly button. I am pretty sure those folks spent several years in therapy trying to recover from the experience.
So, this morning I decided that it was time I got aggressive about healing. Don’t worry I didn’t try to go for a run. I emptied my trashcan, lined it with a plastic bag, and filled it ¼ full of ice and a ¼ full of water. Then I stared at it for a few minutes. I tried really hard to convince myself that it wasn’t nearly as painful as I remembered it, that I was only going to have to go mid calf and only for 20 minutes. Not true, it was just as painful as I remembered it and I couldn’t actually keep it in there for the full 20 minutes, I lasted 15 minutes. I was apparently much tougher when I was 19. It took about 5 minutes for my foot to thaw so I counted that as part of the ice time. Now I will spend the next several hours seeing if I can convince myself to try it again. Because you see, it really is very effective it is just also very traumatizing. I am still trying to get air back into my lungs.
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