Somewhat Mollified
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 | Filed under Fixing the Knee
OK, my PT today was better. The exercises are still old hat to me. But I did get a massage (the extremely deep, painful kind that is the only kind of massage that I tolerate), which I needed, since my vastus lateralis has gone all funny since the surgery. I also got some ice and stim after the exercise portion of the session. My new therapist is much more confident in what he does, so I don’t worry that, when he pushes my knee past the pain threshold, he’s going to end up blundering and causing it trauma.
And I managed to navigate the stairs almost as well as I did last week.
I’m still going to re-evaluate whether the PT is worth the money–when my co-pay goes up to $50 a session come October 1 (which is tomorrow), I have to decide whether 10 minutes of massage and 15 minutes of stim is worth it–but at least I’m not pissed off anymore.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Stim I can give you! I have a TENS unit which helps me not a bit. You may borrow it.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Why, thanks, lady. I’m not 100% sure it does anything for pain relief, either, but it certainly feels soothing after stressing out the knee a bit.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I don’t know if the stim does anything for pain relief. I got that after my PT sessions. I thought perhaps it was to stimulate healing and circulation.
I realized that the best part of my PT sessions was not the exercise, but the massage and stretching. I don’t know that the “strengthening” did anything to ease the knee pain, but the massages and stretches did loosen all those tight and twisted ligaments caused by moving funny due to knee pain.