Progress
I have been seeing a physical therapist, Elena, twice a week, since October 6th: almost two full months. It was one thing to treat my broken wrist -- I broke my distal radius, to get all technical and accurate -- but to me it was more important to treat the cause of the break; i.e., my tendency to fall down.
Elena is not the first person I have seen about my falling. Last year I went through all sorts of tests with a neurologist, including an MRI of my head. My problem is not neurological. I do not have Parkinson's (it runs in my family), I do not have a brain tumor, I have not had a series of small strokes, I do have some neuropathy in my feet and legs (this I knew.) So those sessions ruled out a lot of things, but did not identify a cause. Elena did.
After she took a lot of measurements and worked with me for a couple of sessions, she saw two problems. First of all, my hips weren't flexible enough, so if I stumbled, instead of catching myself, I often went down. Secondly, I wasn't lifting the front half of my feet far enough off the ground with each step, leaving me apt to stub my toe and trip; i.e., I have poor dorsal flexion. (Gawd, I love jargon.) In addition to poor dorsal flexion, my right foot turns in toward my left foot, so I am perfectly capable of tripping myself on my own foot, no uneven paving needed. (I guess that the corrective shoes I wore from birth to four years of age were to correct that right foot. It's an old problem.)
Today when I went in, there were no other patients around, so Elena decided to repeat the measurements. I have made some nice progress. My dorsal flexion has gone from zero on both the left and the right to 9 on one side and 10 on the other. As long as I remember to step out firmly on my heels and roll forward from there, I shouldn't stub my toes all the time anymore. Sometimes, especially when I'm tired, this is hard for me to do and will probably never come naturally.
I am a bit more flexible through the hips, but haven't really made a great deal of progress there. This means that in order not to regress, I will have to continue to do the exercises she has given me forever. She has added a second, more strenuous hip stretch, and over the next couple of weeks, we'll see if that has any impact.
Doing something every single day has never been easy for me, but to allow myself to get worse again should not be an option. Altogether I have seven exercises I must do daily, but they needn't be done all at the same time. The hip stretch, the two floor exercises, and the runner's stretch I've been doing in my pajamas before I get dressed; the three foot exercises I've been working in any old time. Those three are, in fact, the ones I most often skip, so I need to tie them to some daily activity, one that takes place early enough so that I can't use fatigue as an excuse to blow them off. They've gotten blown off a lot. Bad FanSee bad bad bad.
I believe my discharge date is 17 December. I have been working out with John once a week. I'll see if he'll work me in a second time most weeks. That would be two days a week where I didn't have to motivate myself. The other five days...well, I'd just like it be something I do, no matter what, like brushing my teeth. FanSee
Elena is not the first person I have seen about my falling. Last year I went through all sorts of tests with a neurologist, including an MRI of my head. My problem is not neurological. I do not have Parkinson's (it runs in my family), I do not have a brain tumor, I have not had a series of small strokes, I do have some neuropathy in my feet and legs (this I knew.) So those sessions ruled out a lot of things, but did not identify a cause. Elena did.
After she took a lot of measurements and worked with me for a couple of sessions, she saw two problems. First of all, my hips weren't flexible enough, so if I stumbled, instead of catching myself, I often went down. Secondly, I wasn't lifting the front half of my feet far enough off the ground with each step, leaving me apt to stub my toe and trip; i.e., I have poor dorsal flexion. (Gawd, I love jargon.) In addition to poor dorsal flexion, my right foot turns in toward my left foot, so I am perfectly capable of tripping myself on my own foot, no uneven paving needed. (I guess that the corrective shoes I wore from birth to four years of age were to correct that right foot. It's an old problem.)
Today when I went in, there were no other patients around, so Elena decided to repeat the measurements. I have made some nice progress. My dorsal flexion has gone from zero on both the left and the right to 9 on one side and 10 on the other. As long as I remember to step out firmly on my heels and roll forward from there, I shouldn't stub my toes all the time anymore. Sometimes, especially when I'm tired, this is hard for me to do and will probably never come naturally.
I am a bit more flexible through the hips, but haven't really made a great deal of progress there. This means that in order not to regress, I will have to continue to do the exercises she has given me forever. She has added a second, more strenuous hip stretch, and over the next couple of weeks, we'll see if that has any impact.
Doing something every single day has never been easy for me, but to allow myself to get worse again should not be an option. Altogether I have seven exercises I must do daily, but they needn't be done all at the same time. The hip stretch, the two floor exercises, and the runner's stretch I've been doing in my pajamas before I get dressed; the three foot exercises I've been working in any old time. Those three are, in fact, the ones I most often skip, so I need to tie them to some daily activity, one that takes place early enough so that I can't use fatigue as an excuse to blow them off. They've gotten blown off a lot. Bad FanSee bad bad bad.
I believe my discharge date is 17 December. I have been working out with John once a week. I'll see if he'll work me in a second time most weeks. That would be two days a week where I didn't have to motivate myself. The other five days...well, I'd just like it be something I do, no matter what, like brushing my teeth. FanSee