February 07, 2014

Vocabulary: A Journey that Never Ends

Today I learned two new words.

Posterior tibial tendonitis and Osteochondral lesion of the talus.

Vocabulary sucks.


" Well, I learned the words peristerophilist and peristerophily today. I..what? No... ..OH GOD NOT THE EYES!"

I start physical therapy Monday.

.gif is from Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
(Spoiler: Sheeta keeps her eyes)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:48 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Hey, pictures of exercises you can look forward to doing in physical therapyI knew those giant rubber band things would get into it somewhere.

Obviously do what your doctor says first, but those whey protein things that weightlifters eat to help them recover from tearing up their muscles on purpose in exercise? They really did help me recover faster from breaking my arm, and I was a sedentary middle-aged lady with extreme laziness about doing physical therapy. I ate a lot of whole eggs, too. Protein and viteys do help. I bet you get to eat a lot of bananas and electrolytes too.

Ankle injuries are always awkward, because you end up either having to put weight on them, or doing a lot of hopping and/or crutching. On the bright side, you can read a lot of blogs by people who run or jog, and beat up their feet like this all the time by choice. You can get some good tips that way, or learn from horrible examples.

Seriously, it's scary to get injured like this, but you have the tools to understand what's going on and to help yourself recover. Also, you have a good excuse to sit on your butt in the warm and watch anime! It's not all bad!

Posted by: suburbanbanshee at Fri Feb 7 21:51:23 2014 (cvXSV)

2 Work hard. As unpleasant as it is, physical therapy is only as effective as you make it. Some of what they had me do was painful, and some was boring, but I put everything I had into it, and I'm glad I did.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Fri Feb 7 22:11:13 2014 (+rSRq)

3 What Steven said. 

After I fell off a loading dock back in '92, turning the ligaments and cartilage in my right ankle into what the doctor termed "confetti!" with a cheerful tone in his voice, I was on crutches for six months, and a cane for another eight.  I did not put enough effort into my therapy as I should have.

As a result, while it did heal after a fashion, my ankle doesn't like much in the way of uncommon stresses.  For a while, I could sprain it just by sneezing (or at least it felt that way).  Now, some 20+ years later, the internals of my ankle are a solid mass of scar tissue.  It still functions like an ankle, just... reluctantly and with more than a bit of pain.

There is a grand total of fsck-all medical science can do about it.

So do your rehab, and buy lots of bags of frozen peas.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Feb 8 04:30:59 2014 (mOdOJ)

4 There is a happy medium. You want to work hard on your physical therapy, but you also don't want to push yourself so hard that you hurt yourself again.

In my defense of my questionable sanity... while I was somewhat lazy about a few elements of my official physical therapy, I actually pushed myself a fair amount in small cheaty ways at work, or when performing other activities, because that's the kind of idiot I am. They had me come in a couple-three times a week to the therapy place, also, so I was actually putting in a good workout pretty often. If they had only had me coming in once a week or less, my laziness on certain exercises would probably have had bad consequences. (And I probably would have made myself do more official therapy, because the inabilities would have been worse and hence more annoying.) Also, I'm just naturally flexible in ways which are not normally useful (or even noticeable to me), but which made therapy work faster for me than for some.

Still, it's better to do what the therapist tells you, rather than rely on cheaty stuff in the background or your body sliding you out of trouble. Especially since ankles are a lot more trouble than arms. Doing all the exercises in their proper amounts helps keeps your muscles and joints balanced out as you go along, and thus helps prevent bad stuff happening.

But yeah, make sure you eat good, because you need fuel, protein, and vitamins and minerals to heal. Talk to your doctor about it, and he'll probably have plenty to say.

And it'll be spring and summer before you know it, and you'll be feeling much better by then.

Posted by: suburbanbanshee at Sun Feb 9 10:20:49 2014 (cvXSV)

5 Well, If the defect isn't fixed in 6 weeks I'll need surgery eventually. Eventually means this year because of the moonless unlit road that represents how much I know what my health insurance will be after the first of the year, so If the therapy does not fix the problem, I'm looking at six weeks out of work and possibly school this spring/summer.

My motivation is rather high.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Feb 9 21:15:36 2014 (DnAJl)

6 Good luck!

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Feb 10 17:13:15 2014 (nh8FR)

7

My other piece of advice: Sometimes you get to a point where you're not hurting yet, but you feel like crud for no particular reason. And then you realize that actually your bones and muscles are aching, and that pretty soon it will get worse.

This is the time to make sure you don't forget to take your pain pills.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Feb 11 14:34:48 2014 (nh8FR)

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