The physical therapy and pain connection

Exercise is a four letter word, isn’t it? I know some forms of exercise are. Let’s see, there’s leap, jump, lift, flex, hike and the most friendly of all, walk. Okay, so it isn’t my favorite thing to do. I’m not nor have I ever been the athletic type. I’m not lazy. I’m just more cerebral.

As a nurse, my experiences with physical therapy were with those therapists who came onto the unit to walk about with the patients who had a fractured hip, or they applied the motion machines to those who had total knee replacements or generally helped those who were recovering get back on their feet.

After struggling with pain in my sitter, my neck (accompanied by excruciating headaches) and a few other places, I still was unable to get an adequate diagnosis. I looked for and found one of the best rheumatologists in the country, Dr. Rodney Bluestone. He had treated my oldest sister who had psoriatic arthritis and she got better. So I figured he must know what he was doing. His practice was in Beverly Hills, which was three hours from where we lived at the time. The trip was gruesome, with the sit, the ride and the damnable L.A. traffic. But he was well worth it. His approach was a practical one of function. I had to keep moving even if we didn’t have a name for this thing that had come to destroy my life. The local internist I had been seeing belonged to the old school of joint protection. That was the philosophy which said, “If it hurts, let it rest.”

I began to suspect if I let it rest any longer, my husband would come home one day and find me a tangled mass of protoplasm! At the time, my arms and legs were intertwined, unable to even make it into the bathroom. I was tired of lying down, loathed the constant pain and felt completely ostracized from society. By the time I saw Dr. Bluestone, I was on my last nerve, dissolved into tears just talking about myself. It’s important to note that this doctor is British, and he has a totally different idea about moving the joints. Thankfully, those same ideas are now mainstream thinking, but at that time they were not. He even had his own physical therapist in the office. After my second or third trip down to see him, he called her in to evaluate me. I was totally discouraged. I hate to admit my ignorance, but I didn’t see what that had to do with me. I was sick. I needed more medication. I needed a firm diagnosis. I needed someone to relieve me of this burden. I did not need to be told to move. I must confess to you that I can be very stubborn and just didn’t get this whole PT bit, at all. I couldn’t imagine how it pertained to me. I thought he was just passing me off to get rid of me. I know. How stupid can you get?

The first thing the PT did was to explain to me that if I didn’t move, my body was going to become even more misshapen and useless. I’m sure that wasn’t her word “useless,” but that was the general idea. I was having a great deal of neck pain from the long drive down and felt as if my whole body was twisted from my head down to my always painful behind. She directed me over to a full-length mirror and had me look at myself. I was wearing a slip, and it was all too evident that my shoulders were not the same height. Funny, I had never noticed that before. One shoulder was at least two inches higher than the other. Right there before my eyes, I was becoming that tangled mass of protoplasm. It was indeed happening. That was my day of conversion. That was the day I began to embrace physical therapy, faithfully following all of my PT’s recommendations for daily stretches and moderate exercise. I went on and connected with a local physical therapist, and he followed Dr. Bluestone’s protocol.

Over the last 20 years, I have relapsed many times, become lazy and let the whole movement thing slide, only to be brought back abruptly by the pain and suffering that ignoring my body brings. True, it’s overused but the old adage is painfully true, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

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