physical therapy
Apr. 22nd, 2007 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleLast week, I mentioned having problems with my left shoulder. My dr looked at it and sent me to a physical therapist. I felt like I should have been very pleased...objectively, physical therapists are a lot less dangerous than orthopedic surgeons. (And a lot more useful than saying, "Too bad you have a sore shoulder. I guess you need to wait for it to heal." Which I could have gotten for free from any of you.) But I was terrified, because I've had so many bad experiences with physical therapy.
I've had consistently bad luck with physical therapy. Sometimes it didn't help. Sometimes it was actively counter-productive. Sometimes, when it was prescribed to treat chronic pain, it seemed to do lasting damage. I can be stubborn, and I can be stoic, and it can be very dangerous to convince me that "you need to keep doing this painful thing or you are never going to get better." I push through it and damage myself, or I freeze completely, and either way I feel terrible about it.
My first appointment with the physical therapist for this shoulder problem was Friday, and it was distressing. This time was all about diagnostic stuff, so it hurt a lot, and I was also upset about the therapist not paying attention to me, or not taking me seriously. (I'm not sure which.) I told her at the beginning my shoulder hurt when I raised my left arm above horizontal, and she asked sensible questions about exactly where it hurt. Later, she had me raise my arm in front of me, very slowly, to horizontal and then to vertical. She turned to her assistant and said, "See? That way it doesn't hurt!" I pointed out that it hurt very much. We did the same thing with raising the arm to the side, and raising it against resistance, and various tests of strength and range of motion in different position. Every time she said something didn't hurt, I corrected her, because it did hurt. After about 40 minutes of messing around, I was about to start crying hard (there had been tears seeping earlier, but hysterical falling apart crying is different). The physical therapist thought I was about to faint and reacted according to her rather peculiar protocol, but at least they stopped actively hurting me.
The therapist thought I was frightened unto fainting because she was talking about a need to stretch my neck, and I had misunderstood that as a threat of hanging. No. Thanks for the reassurance, but no. I fell apart because I couldn't cope with the pain. The fear came later, when I settled down enough to put together what she had been saying (about the need to strengthen my shoulders) with my past experience (that any upper body strengthening exercise seems to aggravate my headaches and/or right hand problems.) Do I think this therapist has the extraordinary sensitivity, knowledge, and skill to succeed where so many therapists, trainers, and yoga teachers have failed? Not really.
Last week, before physical therapy, my left arm hurt terribly if I raised it over my head, but I could use it almost normally in low positions. Now it hurts all the time. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a more limited range of motion, because it's still possible for me to move the arm through a full range of motion. It just hurts so much the desire not to is overwhelming. Last week, I was having trouble putting on t-shirts. Now it even hurts to maneuver my left arm into the sleeve of a jacket, or to reach into a pocket. Because it hurts to raise it to the height of a kettle above the stove and lift, I have to use my right hand if I want to make tea. But my right hand hurts enough that it doesn't feel worth it. For 2 weeks, it was just the shoulder that hurt, and that mostly hurt when I used it (raising it too high, or carrying too much in a backpack or shoulder bag, or lying on it in bed. Inconvenient, but not hurting all the time.) Now it hurts from jaw to fingertips. The icing the physical therapist recommended seems to be making the shooting pains in the hand worse, but I'm afraid of not doing anything for the shoulder pain when it's so bad.
I've had consistently bad luck with physical therapy. Sometimes it didn't help. Sometimes it was actively counter-productive. Sometimes, when it was prescribed to treat chronic pain, it seemed to do lasting damage. I can be stubborn, and I can be stoic, and it can be very dangerous to convince me that "you need to keep doing this painful thing or you are never going to get better." I push through it and damage myself, or I freeze completely, and either way I feel terrible about it.
My first appointment with the physical therapist for this shoulder problem was Friday, and it was distressing. This time was all about diagnostic stuff, so it hurt a lot, and I was also upset about the therapist not paying attention to me, or not taking me seriously. (I'm not sure which.) I told her at the beginning my shoulder hurt when I raised my left arm above horizontal, and she asked sensible questions about exactly where it hurt. Later, she had me raise my arm in front of me, very slowly, to horizontal and then to vertical. She turned to her assistant and said, "See? That way it doesn't hurt!" I pointed out that it hurt very much. We did the same thing with raising the arm to the side, and raising it against resistance, and various tests of strength and range of motion in different position. Every time she said something didn't hurt, I corrected her, because it did hurt. After about 40 minutes of messing around, I was about to start crying hard (there had been tears seeping earlier, but hysterical falling apart crying is different). The physical therapist thought I was about to faint and reacted according to her rather peculiar protocol, but at least they stopped actively hurting me.
The therapist thought I was frightened unto fainting because she was talking about a need to stretch my neck, and I had misunderstood that as a threat of hanging. No. Thanks for the reassurance, but no. I fell apart because I couldn't cope with the pain. The fear came later, when I settled down enough to put together what she had been saying (about the need to strengthen my shoulders) with my past experience (that any upper body strengthening exercise seems to aggravate my headaches and/or right hand problems.) Do I think this therapist has the extraordinary sensitivity, knowledge, and skill to succeed where so many therapists, trainers, and yoga teachers have failed? Not really.
Last week, before physical therapy, my left arm hurt terribly if I raised it over my head, but I could use it almost normally in low positions. Now it hurts all the time. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a more limited range of motion, because it's still possible for me to move the arm through a full range of motion. It just hurts so much the desire not to is overwhelming. Last week, I was having trouble putting on t-shirts. Now it even hurts to maneuver my left arm into the sleeve of a jacket, or to reach into a pocket. Because it hurts to raise it to the height of a kettle above the stove and lift, I have to use my right hand if I want to make tea. But my right hand hurts enough that it doesn't feel worth it. For 2 weeks, it was just the shoulder that hurt, and that mostly hurt when I used it (raising it too high, or carrying too much in a backpack or shoulder bag, or lying on it in bed. Inconvenient, but not hurting all the time.) Now it hurts from jaw to fingertips. The icing the physical therapist recommended seems to be making the shooting pains in the hand worse, but I'm afraid of not doing anything for the shoulder pain when it's so bad.
