I showed up for my first physical therapy appointment today at Accelerated Rehabilitation. My neighbor Gretchen is a therapist there. She's amazing at her job. She's like a muscle whisperer, except she doesn't whisper as much as she beats them into submission.
Anyway, Gretchen is on vacation this week, so her colleague Keith did my work up. He did a lot of measuring and testing and then started me on a few exercises that I'm allowed to do. I've advanced from just flexing and pointing my foot to being able to do light things from side to side and to try to spell the alphabet with my foot.
When I was in PT over the summer fixing my weak piriformis muscles, I was doing a lot of lunge walking. They had me do some today, too. Needless to say, I can totally lunch like a champ when my right leg goes forward. But when my right leg is in the back, there's no flexibility.
And here I thought I was a bad ass because for the first time in two and a half months I was able to walk down the stairs rotating feet right, left, right, left this weekend! :-)
Keith did a lot of work on my calf, too. He rolled a torture device over is that is strangely more foreign and crippling than a foam roller. It's that "Oh man, this is evil... but it feels so good," kind of pain. The kind where you have to grit your teeth or cling to the table to get through it.
I was there for roughly 90 minutes, and it wore me out, and I have to say, I didn't do much of anything besides a LOT of stretching and a few strength moves on the shuttle.
I get to go three times a week for the next four weeks, and then we'll probably reduce to two visits a week. I'll see Gretchen on Tuesdays, in case she has to beat me once a week with her ASTYM tools, and then I'll see the other therapists for regular work.
Right now, as I type this, Maya, the fuzzball, is sitting in my lap with my zipper pull from my sweatshirt in her mouth trying to zip me up.
I totally wish she wasn't sitting on my left arm, so I could reach the camera!
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