Physical Therapy Day 3

 It is not really my goal to have this blog focus exclusively on doctor visits and therapy, but that's one of the things on my mind right now!

Last Wednesday was the third day of physical therapy. You might notice that it has been two weeks since my last visit, when I was feeling a little anxious about heading back in to an open room with other patients and a few therapists walking around. Well, after posting, I reached out to my physical therapist. I told her that I wasn't terribly comfortable with the situation, and she offered a couple of solutions:

• continue weekly therapy in a private room
• discontinue therapy but take away a progressive series of exercises.

Heartened by her willingness to work with my concerns, I suggested something a little different: in-person therapy every other week, starting on the recumbent stationary bike in the open gym area (because I liked that part, and it didn't take very long), and then proceeding to the private room. She agreed! So last week was my first visit of this updated schedule.

This was a very good choice. 

After the last visit, I had a series of exercises that I was supposed to do twice daily and some that I was supposed to do every day. The reverse clamshell and pelvic tilt were twice daily; the sidelying leg raise, the L-shaped hip abduction, and the piriformis stretch were every other day. Unfortunately, I was not usually able to work in two of the twice daily routines, and some days (the days when I was trying to do THREE sequences) I wound up feeling very sore.

To address this, the therapist observed how I was doing the exercises. She noticed immediately that I was using my back to lift my leg up really high--and so not actually working the muscle that was supposed to be worked. So she told me to adjust the lower leg to stabilize my core and not lift so high. Voilà! Working the correct muscle. She also advised warming up before doing the PT exercises, not doing the abduction exercises (the "L" lift and the sidelying leg lift) on the same day, and ending with the piriformis stretch. She told me to do diaphragm/belly breathing every day as well as hip tilts in any position with core engagement.

So on a basic level, I learned that I have been doing every exercise just a little bit wrong for... oh, forever. I'm not sure exactly what this means--that I should really only do exercise while supervised? That isn't very practical. One problem does seem to be that all exercise programs assume a base level of strength. And while I was strong in some areas, I was apparently very, very weak in others. Hopefully, strengthening these key areas will allow me to do other exercise independently.

I did ask her whether I might add in some other exercise some days, like yoga. She said to look specifically for "gentle" or "restorative" practices. I might have been pushing it a little to do a "core" routine, but it was only 10 minutes long and worked on some of the weak muscles. I was excited to avoid the dreaded "hip click" in the "toe tap" leg lower and lift sequence, similar to the below:

Engaging the core--who knew? 

So now instead of trying to do three sets of exercise on one day and one the next, I have two routines that I alternate. It is working well! I was ever able to go outside and do some gardening (with a lot of bending over and squatting) on Saturday without a problem! (Unless you count that my back muscles are still sore two days later, but it's not the same. It's an area that doesn't usually cause me any problem, and, you know, it's muscle soreness. It's just different.)

Today, we resumed our morning mile walk (my husband and I, joined by daughter #1, who finds that it gives her a good start to the day). We slept in both weekend mornings.

Now, the anxiety is still present, it's just not as bad.

I didn't sleep particularly well Saturday evening because of a cough. I don't have asthma, but whatever the internet says about it, allergies regularly give me a cough. All allergy symptoms seem worse for me when ragweed is dominant, and ragweed is dominant. Strange that I didn't even have allergies until the past several years. (Did you know that this can be a little-known symptom of perimenopause? Fun fact.) So I coughed quite a bit that night. Which made me anxious. Because, you know, COVID. As I was trying to rationalize it away on Sunday, with my throat itching and screaming at me, I realized--no, I haven't been limiting myself to just a few relatively safe places, I went to physical therapy. So I worried for a bit that I would have to get a COVID test (we had required texting for work week before last). But I took Benadryl and Advil and felt better throughout the day. When symptoms returned in the evening, I took more Benadryl (a child's dose each time) and forgot all about them. I slept well with no coughing. But in the meantime, every variation from my routine that corresponds to symptoms is bound to increase my anxiety. I'm so tired of it, really.

But overall, things are improving, and the outlook is good! I'm glad I didn't take the "no visits/progressive exercise routine" option. I would probably have persisted in the errors that made me hurt more. I'm really hoping that as I get stronger, I will feel better and be able to enjoy more kinds of activities. I tried to jog last week--a mistake because I think I had something like a mild shin splint (or that kind of pain, anyway) as a result. But maybe jogging can eventually happen. Rowing is rib- rather than hip-related, but dare I hope that I could, one day use my rower? Time will tell.

Cheers!