Take Your Own Pulse

The EA Active game for Wii has thus far proven to be one heck of a workout (and proves what I already knew, which was that I am in poor physical shape). The first day I tried it, I did a 'demo' workout to show me how to do the lower body exercises. By midway through the series of squats, side lunges, and alternating lunge jumps, my thighs were quivering. I didn't actually complete the full series, instead moving on to arms (where I don't usually have any difficulty, especially when only using a resistance band. Therefore, the problem is for my poor legs, which have to heft my body weight around, and this is after losing 15 lbs! But I digress).

The following day at work, my legs felt strange and heavy. I had to push myself out of chairs, as my quads seemed strangely unable.

But the next day, when I was (of course) on call, was the worst. My leg muscles were weak and painful; my quads were tender to palpation and actually hurt just walking. I adopted a weird-looking waddle that didn't require my knees to bend much while moving, and my pace was about half what it normally is (I may be short, but I walk fast). I avoided the stairs and looked like a total douchebag, being a young, healthy-looking person taking the elevator up and down when I was only traveling one floor. I thought about asking the nurse to draw a CK level and hook me up to a bag of saline, in case I was having rhabdo, but I resisted my (well-developed) inner hypochondriac and instead made fun of myself all day.

This was all fine and dandy until I got called to a code. Try climbing a flight of stairs and walking as fast as possible doing a duck waddle and going "ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch" up each stair. The nurse I followed to the code gave me some crap for letting him beat me there, but he only beat me by a few seconds. (The code was short and successful, the nurses were already doing compressions when I arrived, and basically I did nothing useful except gather labs for the real doctor who showed up--the resident.)

Fortunately, after a couple of days my legs were fine. Just in time to do another round of Wii Active.