amanda_lodden (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amanda_lodden) wrote2013-02-11 03:36 pm
amanda_lodden) wrote2013-02-11 03:36 pm
Entry tags:
Physical therapy
Let's pretend I wrote a journal entry yesterday about how my physical therapy was going. (I've been meaning to.) It would go something like this:
Aaaaaaand then there was today. [B] took a class on low-back pain this weekend, and he was eager to apply the new teachings to my back. He asked if I was willing to do a little evaluation worksheet with him, and I said yes. This was my first mistake, because while it started off pretty innocuous, midway through it I complained "you said eval, not torture." The movements and positions pissed off both my hip and my lower back, and I've been popping pain pills like I did when I first hurt my back.
Of course, this new class of [B]'s taught that pain in the hips and legs of a back patient is still centered in the back and should be treated by treating the lower back, so the things that help my hip feel better didn't happen today either. And despite [B]'s promise that we would still work on the IT Band as well but he just didn't have time to do both today... I have this crushing fear that we'll revert back to the "standard" back treatment that left me with the low level of pain that Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.
Today has been a lot of crying, partly from the increased pain but mostly from the emotional baggage that comes from realizing that all of the progress I've made can be undone in one fell swoop, and at the behest of an expert who supposedly knows what they are doing (*). Then there's the fear I mentioned earlier, not just of having to put up with a therapy regimen that doesn't help as much as I know it could, but also of having to fight tooth and nail to have someone LISTEN to me about what hurts and what just isn't right. It's so very, very frustrating to KNOW that something is wrong and have doctors and nurses and therapists and other people who don't live in your body tell you that it's something else, and then have all the treatments for that something else still leave you feeling that the thing you've been saying is wrong is still wrong.
(*) I am not intending that in any sort of sarcastic tone. [B]'s earlier efforts resulted in such a tremendous leap forward that I will not deny his expertise, though at the moment I am seriously doubting the credentials of whoever taught his damned class this weekend.
I started physical therapy for my back again at the beginning of the year, at my request. It helped my back a great deal a couple years ago, but the pain never completely went away and instead settled into a lowish-level of chronic pain, and I'd really like to have it go completely away.
I'm going to the same place, because I really liked the therapists there, even the ones that I never actually worked with but were just "around" at the times I was there. There was really only one person that I didn't like, a brash young guy who may or may not have been interning there (I was never all that clear) who pushed too hard even when I said "No, that movement hurts" to the point that he made me cry. So I called up and made an appointment and told them that I'd worked with [K] a couple of years ago. We worked out a time, and as we were finishing up, the receptionist said "Okay, that's 12:30 with [B] on Monday. See you then!" and I said "Sounds good!" and hung up and said "Wait, which one is [B]?" and started wracking my brain, going through each of the therapists I could remember, and then said "Oh, crap, I think [guy who made me cry] is [B]."
I debated about what to do about it for the entire weekend prior to my appointment, and ultimately decided to give it a try anyway. Maybe [B] was a different person entirely. Maybe [B] was the same guy but had gotten better-- he did look pretty aghast at making me cry back then, so maybe I had been an object lesson in listening to patient feedback. Also, in the intervening years I have gotten better about communicating clearly, and I've got a better handle on what movements I can and can't do, so even if [B] was the same guy and hadn't gotten better, *I* had gotten better. I was there entirely at my own option; if I didn't like how it was going, I had options for demanding a different therapist or a different location, so there was no point in punishing a therapist for being an asshole without giving him a chance to actually be an asshole first. (As a side note: that's actually a pretty good rule of thumb no matter what the situation -- if you're going to punish someone for being an ass, make sure you've given them the chance to actually be an ass first.)
I went. And [B] turned out to be the guy who had made me cry last time. And I sucked it up and treated him as though he were a brand new person I'd never met and gave him a chance, and he turned out to be absolutely fantastic-- better than [K], and [K] had been really good. In part BECAUSE of his "Let's try this and see whether it makes a difference" attitude that led to him insisting I do the move that made me cry the first time, he found a tight muscle in my hip (my IT Band) that was contributing to a lot of my pain, and I feel better than I have in years-- and that muscle is in my hip, where I've been saying for quite some time that something is wrong, and kept being told that it was referred pain and the real problem was in my lower back. So in addition to providing some serious pain relief, this new "work on the IT Band" regimen has come with a heaping side order of vindication as well.
Aaaaaaand then there was today. [B] took a class on low-back pain this weekend, and he was eager to apply the new teachings to my back. He asked if I was willing to do a little evaluation worksheet with him, and I said yes. This was my first mistake, because while it started off pretty innocuous, midway through it I complained "you said eval, not torture." The movements and positions pissed off both my hip and my lower back, and I've been popping pain pills like I did when I first hurt my back.
Of course, this new class of [B]'s taught that pain in the hips and legs of a back patient is still centered in the back and should be treated by treating the lower back, so the things that help my hip feel better didn't happen today either. And despite [B]'s promise that we would still work on the IT Band as well but he just didn't have time to do both today... I have this crushing fear that we'll revert back to the "standard" back treatment that left me with the low level of pain that Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.
Today has been a lot of crying, partly from the increased pain but mostly from the emotional baggage that comes from realizing that all of the progress I've made can be undone in one fell swoop, and at the behest of an expert who supposedly knows what they are doing (*). Then there's the fear I mentioned earlier, not just of having to put up with a therapy regimen that doesn't help as much as I know it could, but also of having to fight tooth and nail to have someone LISTEN to me about what hurts and what just isn't right. It's so very, very frustrating to KNOW that something is wrong and have doctors and nurses and therapists and other people who don't live in your body tell you that it's something else, and then have all the treatments for that something else still leave you feeling that the thing you've been saying is wrong is still wrong.
(*) I am not intending that in any sort of sarcastic tone. [B]'s earlier efforts resulted in such a tremendous leap forward that I will not deny his expertise, though at the moment I am seriously doubting the credentials of whoever taught his damned class this weekend.