Physical therapy

It occurs to me that I casually mentioned physical therapy but gave no background information. So here is the background and an update.
20 years ago this October I was in a car accident where I sustained a back injury or two or three. My doctor at the time was concerned about a whiplash injury to C5. I had a year of physical therapy and was released from care with a TENS unit and the admonition that it would be just pain management for the rest of my life.

So I managed. I went to a chiropractor who did the X-rays no one else had bothered to do. I'd completely reversed the curvature of my spine and my right hip was canting upwards, shortening my right leg by, sometimes, as much as an inch. I continued to see this chiropractor on and off for many years. I got to a point where once or twice a year was good enough. But over the last five years, I've seen a dramatic change in the effectiveness of chiropractic care until, at the first if this year, When I went for treatment, I'd spend three days in painful recovery; I'd feel good for three days and then I'd need another treatment. I decided to talk to my GP about it and see if we could find a new therapy that would relieve my pain for more than three days.

He took X-rays and they indicated that I have some defuse degeneration and narrowing at L2-3. He focused on the sacral-lumbar area because that's where I'm having the most consistant problems. He recommended physical therapy as a first course of action.

So, here I am. Last Wednesday, I had my first appointment. He did a very thorough evaluation and indicated that I have hyper-mobility in many of my joints, including the SI joint. This is not a good thing because it leads to instability in the joints. So, his first course of action was to limit the mobility of the SI joint by putting me in an SI belt. For a week I have worn it and hated it. It left welts on my back, pinched, slid and rolled, interfered with my clothing, and put painful pressure on the bursa and sensitive skin. I whined about it today so he's changed the style of belt and it seems it might be more comfortable. He also had me walk down the hall once with and without it. It's a noticeable difference. Without it, I'm wobbly and swishy. With it, I'm much more stable.

Last week he gave me some simple stretching exercises to do. I discovered the one exercise was very painful on my right side. Today, when I asked, he indicated that wasn't normal muscular pain but neurological. He did some stretching and manipulation to adjust the pressure on the nerves and doing the exercise was much less painful.

When he did the initial assessment he asked me when I injured my left ankle. I had no idea and Mom doesn't remember either. I always am turning my ankles. He showed me today that the ankle affects the knee which in turn throws the hip off kilter. So I have strengthening exercises for the ankle. While working on exercises with him, I had a sharp pain mid-back and he noted that T10 seemed a little irritable- it's also a common area to injure in a car accident. More exercises.

I'm glad he's thorough and observant. I am willing to do the work if it might reduce my pain but right now, I'm really just tired of hurting and the pain levels are, not surprisingly, higher than normal while I'm doing all of this therapy.