stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2021-07-20 10:07 am
stevenpiziks) wrote2021-07-20 10:07 am
Entry tags:
Hyper-Flexive Man Reframes Physical Therapy
I'm trying to reframe my physical therapy.
Lemme explain. It turns out, I have hyper-flexible joints, what people used to call "double-jointed." I can reach any part of my own back with either hand, for example. You know that police move where a cop grabs your left arm, wrenches it behind you, shoves it against your back, and lifts you up on your toes so you can't move? That doesn't work with me. You wrench my left arm behind me and lift, my arm bends all the way to the left side of my rib cage. I turn around and say, "What the heck are you doing?" It doesn't hurt in the slightest.
That's hyper-flexible.
It happens not because my bones are strangely-shaped. It's because my tendons and muscles are looser, which allows the joints to go where no man has gone before.
(SIDE NOTE: Hyper-flexible joints are also associated with autism. Aran is even more flexible than I am--he can bend his little finger back to touch his wrist. Given the number of times in my life when people thought my reactions to social situations were strange or even rude and the number of times I've completely misread people when everyone around me seemed to know what was going on, and given that my son is autistic, I wonder if I land somewhere on that spectrum myself. It would explain a lot.)
This might sound amusing. I've had a super-power my entire life and didn't know it. I'm Hyper-Flexible Man! And it's had its advantages. Until now.
Having hyper-flexible joints means I do things that human joints aren't actually meant to do. One of these things is reach into the back of the car from the driver's seat to grab the bag of pandemic masks I kept there. I've learned this is something most people's shoulders won't let them do--they literally can't bend that way. My shoulders aren't supposed to bend that way, either, but my loose ligaments allow it to happen. Doing this particular move daily during the pandemic finally caused some minor tearing, which in turn causes pain when I move my left arm in certain ways.
The pain is instant and debilitating. There's no build-up, just WHAM! Agony so bad it brings tears to my eyes and I have to stop whatever I'm doing. It last 30-40 seconds, then ends just as abruptly. There's no real pattern to it. I can move my arm in a certain direction and I'm fine. I do the exact same motion again and WHAM! I turned over in bed once and yelped loud enough to wake Darwin.
I went to a joint specialist, who gave me an MRI scan and said my hyper-flexible rotor cuff was injured. He gave me a cortisone shot, a process I'm not eager to repeat, and sent me across the hall to regular physical therapy sessions.
The physical therapy office looks like a hospital ward mooshed into a gym mooshed into an elementary school playground. Hospital beds line one wall, and the other walls are lined with brightly-colored inflatable balls, weights, miniature staircases, and weight machines.
PT started off . . . badly. Not because it was painful. It wasn't. That was part of the problem. Every day, I went in and did some warmup on an exercise machine. Then the therapist gave me little exercises to do, mostly with these giant rubber bands. I wrapped them around my wrists and moved my arms in different directions against the resistance of the band. The exercises didn't feel like I was doing much, but I did them dutifully. After about 40 minutes of "work," the therapist massaged my arm and shoulder VERY gently, put my shoulder on ice for ten minutes, and I went home. This happened twice a week. I actually felt resentful because it seemed like a colossal waste of time.
I also noticed that I was the youngest person there. Every other client in the PT area was in their 70s or 80s, many of them morbidly obese. Their exercises were, as a result, very low-key, very gentle. I wondered if the therapists' mindset was that I was also that age, and also a generally inactive person, when I'm neither. I finally sat the therapist down.
"I'm not working hard here," I said. "Am I supposed to be? These exercises are no effort for me, and if we're supposed to be strengthening my shoulder, it's not going to happen at this rate."
E---, the therapist, said the exercises were supposed to =tighten= my shoulder more than anything else. This is where I learned that the hyper-flexibility was an actual problem. PT is working to reduce or eliminate my flexibility because of the stress it causes on my arm and shoulder.
This caused an unexpected storm of emotion. This hyper-flexibility was . . . ME. It's something I can do, something I've always been able to do. I like being able to do it. PT is trying to take that away from me. This upset me a lot. But I also knew that the pain can't continue, and that, just because I CAN flex that far, doesn't mean I SHOULD. And I'm having trouble reconciling these two things.
The whole thing also wraps itself around the general anxiety I get now over nearly any medical procedures in general. This all this turned PT into a source of stress. I realized I was starting to see the therapy team as adversaries, and my reactions to them were becoming icy. I was also doing my best to circumvent the exercises--doing the minimum, doing them too quickly to get them over with, and so on. This wasn't where I wanted my thinking or behavior to go. It certainly wouldn't help the physical pain go away.
Just to top it off, I was =angry=. I've already spent--and continue to spend--so much time in hospitals and doctor's offices. Not a single week has gone by this summer without at least two appointments, and often more than that. One week, I had four separate appointments in three days. I'm supposed to be unwinding and recovering from the worst school year of my career this summer, a year in which four family members, including my father, died. And I'm spending it at medical centers getting poked and prodded and tested. The cancer diagnosis, the one that the urologist assured me is a very low risk of becoming a problem, also puts its oar in here. COVID, multiple family deaths, kidney stones, cancer, and now my shoulder. I can't get a break, and I'm furious, and don't know what to do about it.
Totally unaware of all this, E-- said they would step up the exercises, and they did. The stupid rubber band exercises ended, as did the useless massaging. Instead, they put me on a weight machine and started me with advanced planking exercises. They also had me lifting free weights and holding them outstretched. These all were =much= more difficult, even painful. Not injury painful; straining and burning painful. The kind where I had to chant to myself, "You can do this. It's only ten more seconds." Or, "Two more reps. Come on, man. You can do it." I end my sessions drenched in sweat.
You would think this would solve the anxiety and anger problem, right? It was what I'd asked for, and it's what I know I need.
It made things =worse.= My emotions told me I was being bullied. "You thought those exercises were wimpy, huh? All right--we'll make it way, way worse, dumbass." My stress levels climbed, to the point where I had to force myself to walk through the PT facility door.
I need to say here that the PT people have always been friendly and polite. Their only fault was underestimating what I could do for the first several sessions, and they worked on correcting the problem when I brought it up. This is all about my emotional responses and a reflexive mistrust of their motives. I see them as only =pretending= to be helpful, while inside they must have a secret agenda and are going out of their way to make life hard for me. I know this is foolish and idiotic. My emotions don't care.
Yesterday, the therapist set me to do an especially harsh planking exercise, and upped the time for each position from 30 seconds to 45 seconds. Complete four positions--and go! It was painful and crushing, and I was dripping sweat onto the mat. When I finished the second position, I sat on the mat and cried.
I turned my back to the rest of the room to keep it to myself, but I did sit for several minutes, crying behind my mask. I couldn't live with this. Not just the PT--the deaths and the stress and the pain. Then I made myself get up and do the rest of the positions.
When I left that session, I was so tired and wrung out I could barely get the car open to drive home. I was miserable and frustrated and angry.
I sat in the car to think about this. It couldn't go on this way. I do the exercise and it helps my body, but my psyche keeps damaging itself in the process. I saw that I needed to reframe my thinking toward PT.
I checked my Fitbit. It gave me the number of calories I'd burned during the new workout, and they were comparable to what I burned during a decent run. Huh.
Okay. Let's look at it this way. I used to lift weights at a gym as part of my exercise regimen. I went three times a week for about 45 minutes. The physical therapy facility and the gym are much the same. In both places, I would go in, warm up a little, and work out, then go home to shower. And the PT facility is even BETTER than a gym. It's covered by insurance, so there are no fees. A personal trainer follows me around, corrects me when I'm exercising wrong, and increases the intensity or gives me something new to do when I "outgrow" an activity. I'm getting a better workout at physical therapy than I did at a gym, in fact. And if I've already had a gym workout that day, I don't need to do a run or ride or other workout.
I'm not going to physical therapy; I'm going to the gym. I don't have a physical therapist; I have a personal trainer. And it's FREE.
I'll see if this approach works.
Lemme explain. It turns out, I have hyper-flexible joints, what people used to call "double-jointed." I can reach any part of my own back with either hand, for example. You know that police move where a cop grabs your left arm, wrenches it behind you, shoves it against your back, and lifts you up on your toes so you can't move? That doesn't work with me. You wrench my left arm behind me and lift, my arm bends all the way to the left side of my rib cage. I turn around and say, "What the heck are you doing?" It doesn't hurt in the slightest.
That's hyper-flexible.
It happens not because my bones are strangely-shaped. It's because my tendons and muscles are looser, which allows the joints to go where no man has gone before.
(SIDE NOTE: Hyper-flexible joints are also associated with autism. Aran is even more flexible than I am--he can bend his little finger back to touch his wrist. Given the number of times in my life when people thought my reactions to social situations were strange or even rude and the number of times I've completely misread people when everyone around me seemed to know what was going on, and given that my son is autistic, I wonder if I land somewhere on that spectrum myself. It would explain a lot.)
This might sound amusing. I've had a super-power my entire life and didn't know it. I'm Hyper-Flexible Man! And it's had its advantages. Until now.
Having hyper-flexible joints means I do things that human joints aren't actually meant to do. One of these things is reach into the back of the car from the driver's seat to grab the bag of pandemic masks I kept there. I've learned this is something most people's shoulders won't let them do--they literally can't bend that way. My shoulders aren't supposed to bend that way, either, but my loose ligaments allow it to happen. Doing this particular move daily during the pandemic finally caused some minor tearing, which in turn causes pain when I move my left arm in certain ways.
The pain is instant and debilitating. There's no build-up, just WHAM! Agony so bad it brings tears to my eyes and I have to stop whatever I'm doing. It last 30-40 seconds, then ends just as abruptly. There's no real pattern to it. I can move my arm in a certain direction and I'm fine. I do the exact same motion again and WHAM! I turned over in bed once and yelped loud enough to wake Darwin.
I went to a joint specialist, who gave me an MRI scan and said my hyper-flexible rotor cuff was injured. He gave me a cortisone shot, a process I'm not eager to repeat, and sent me across the hall to regular physical therapy sessions.
The physical therapy office looks like a hospital ward mooshed into a gym mooshed into an elementary school playground. Hospital beds line one wall, and the other walls are lined with brightly-colored inflatable balls, weights, miniature staircases, and weight machines.
PT started off . . . badly. Not because it was painful. It wasn't. That was part of the problem. Every day, I went in and did some warmup on an exercise machine. Then the therapist gave me little exercises to do, mostly with these giant rubber bands. I wrapped them around my wrists and moved my arms in different directions against the resistance of the band. The exercises didn't feel like I was doing much, but I did them dutifully. After about 40 minutes of "work," the therapist massaged my arm and shoulder VERY gently, put my shoulder on ice for ten minutes, and I went home. This happened twice a week. I actually felt resentful because it seemed like a colossal waste of time.
I also noticed that I was the youngest person there. Every other client in the PT area was in their 70s or 80s, many of them morbidly obese. Their exercises were, as a result, very low-key, very gentle. I wondered if the therapists' mindset was that I was also that age, and also a generally inactive person, when I'm neither. I finally sat the therapist down.
"I'm not working hard here," I said. "Am I supposed to be? These exercises are no effort for me, and if we're supposed to be strengthening my shoulder, it's not going to happen at this rate."
E---, the therapist, said the exercises were supposed to =tighten= my shoulder more than anything else. This is where I learned that the hyper-flexibility was an actual problem. PT is working to reduce or eliminate my flexibility because of the stress it causes on my arm and shoulder.
This caused an unexpected storm of emotion. This hyper-flexibility was . . . ME. It's something I can do, something I've always been able to do. I like being able to do it. PT is trying to take that away from me. This upset me a lot. But I also knew that the pain can't continue, and that, just because I CAN flex that far, doesn't mean I SHOULD. And I'm having trouble reconciling these two things.
The whole thing also wraps itself around the general anxiety I get now over nearly any medical procedures in general. This all this turned PT into a source of stress. I realized I was starting to see the therapy team as adversaries, and my reactions to them were becoming icy. I was also doing my best to circumvent the exercises--doing the minimum, doing them too quickly to get them over with, and so on. This wasn't where I wanted my thinking or behavior to go. It certainly wouldn't help the physical pain go away.
Just to top it off, I was =angry=. I've already spent--and continue to spend--so much time in hospitals and doctor's offices. Not a single week has gone by this summer without at least two appointments, and often more than that. One week, I had four separate appointments in three days. I'm supposed to be unwinding and recovering from the worst school year of my career this summer, a year in which four family members, including my father, died. And I'm spending it at medical centers getting poked and prodded and tested. The cancer diagnosis, the one that the urologist assured me is a very low risk of becoming a problem, also puts its oar in here. COVID, multiple family deaths, kidney stones, cancer, and now my shoulder. I can't get a break, and I'm furious, and don't know what to do about it.
Totally unaware of all this, E-- said they would step up the exercises, and they did. The stupid rubber band exercises ended, as did the useless massaging. Instead, they put me on a weight machine and started me with advanced planking exercises. They also had me lifting free weights and holding them outstretched. These all were =much= more difficult, even painful. Not injury painful; straining and burning painful. The kind where I had to chant to myself, "You can do this. It's only ten more seconds." Or, "Two more reps. Come on, man. You can do it." I end my sessions drenched in sweat.
You would think this would solve the anxiety and anger problem, right? It was what I'd asked for, and it's what I know I need.
It made things =worse.= My emotions told me I was being bullied. "You thought those exercises were wimpy, huh? All right--we'll make it way, way worse, dumbass." My stress levels climbed, to the point where I had to force myself to walk through the PT facility door.
I need to say here that the PT people have always been friendly and polite. Their only fault was underestimating what I could do for the first several sessions, and they worked on correcting the problem when I brought it up. This is all about my emotional responses and a reflexive mistrust of their motives. I see them as only =pretending= to be helpful, while inside they must have a secret agenda and are going out of their way to make life hard for me. I know this is foolish and idiotic. My emotions don't care.
Yesterday, the therapist set me to do an especially harsh planking exercise, and upped the time for each position from 30 seconds to 45 seconds. Complete four positions--and go! It was painful and crushing, and I was dripping sweat onto the mat. When I finished the second position, I sat on the mat and cried.
I turned my back to the rest of the room to keep it to myself, but I did sit for several minutes, crying behind my mask. I couldn't live with this. Not just the PT--the deaths and the stress and the pain. Then I made myself get up and do the rest of the positions.
When I left that session, I was so tired and wrung out I could barely get the car open to drive home. I was miserable and frustrated and angry.
I sat in the car to think about this. It couldn't go on this way. I do the exercise and it helps my body, but my psyche keeps damaging itself in the process. I saw that I needed to reframe my thinking toward PT.
I checked my Fitbit. It gave me the number of calories I'd burned during the new workout, and they were comparable to what I burned during a decent run. Huh.
Okay. Let's look at it this way. I used to lift weights at a gym as part of my exercise regimen. I went three times a week for about 45 minutes. The physical therapy facility and the gym are much the same. In both places, I would go in, warm up a little, and work out, then go home to shower. And the PT facility is even BETTER than a gym. It's covered by insurance, so there are no fees. A personal trainer follows me around, corrects me when I'm exercising wrong, and increases the intensity or gives me something new to do when I "outgrow" an activity. I'm getting a better workout at physical therapy than I did at a gym, in fact. And if I've already had a gym workout that day, I don't need to do a run or ride or other workout.
I'm not going to physical therapy; I'm going to the gym. I don't have a physical therapist; I have a personal trainer. And it's FREE.
I'll see if this approach works.