Now that I had the diagnosis and initial treatment plan, I was feeling a little better. The initial treatment plan included oral medication and 5 days of physical therapy. My idea of physical therapy was heat packs, infrared and ultrasound treatments. I had absolutely no idea what lay in store for me.
As I landed at the clinic for my first session of physical therapy, I was already making plans what I will do after the 30 minutes were over. Praveen TJ (my first physiotherapist) asked me a few questions about my pain type - where, what kind, how strong etc. Then he started "giving" me trigger point therapy - this involves manually pressing trigger points on muscles to reduce the pain. If you remember my last post, Fibromyalgia causes heightened feeling of pain when pressure is applied and here I was paying to have that pressure applied on the most painful area - trigger points! Soon I was crying out in agony, I still don't remember how I survived that first session but I do remember that afterwards all I wanted to do was to go home and curl up in bed - because of the physical pain and because of the mental anguish that accompanied the realization that treatment of my problem is going to be atleast as painful as the ailment itself!
Next day and day after I needed lot of determination to take another 30 minutes of the painful therapy but I did and soon 5 days were over. However, there wasn't any significant reduction in the pain. I consulted the doctor again, as planned, and he prescribed me one month of therapy. That's when I knew that I am not getting rid of this problem any time soon and I might as well try to understand the problem and the treatment course a little better.
So I started asking questions - to doctor, to Praveen, to other physiotherapists at the clinic, to anyone who was willing to answer my questions- as Praveen used to call me - I was a walking talking "question bank". Slowly I understood a few but very important things like - what is referred pain; what is the difference between trigger point pain and tenderness pain; what is myofascial pain; what activities, especially if repeated, would increase pain in which area of my body. A month got over, the relief was there but not enough so I started taking one hour of physical therapy every day.
During this time my fitness levels also took a nosedive. I had to stop all forms of exercising including yoga as that was increasing my pain and undoing the work done by my therapist. For an endorphin junkie not getting the daily fix is a big thing and on top of that I was in pain every moment of every single day. By now my pain had spread to my entire body, it was no longer restricted to right shoulder or iliopsoas. This was because I started using my left arm more as right was paining and soon that started paining as well. Similarly, I started to reduce the pressure on my right leg and soon my left leg was complaining. Guess nothing could escape this pain!
As I landed at the clinic for my first session of physical therapy, I was already making plans what I will do after the 30 minutes were over. Praveen TJ (my first physiotherapist) asked me a few questions about my pain type - where, what kind, how strong etc. Then he started "giving" me trigger point therapy - this involves manually pressing trigger points on muscles to reduce the pain. If you remember my last post, Fibromyalgia causes heightened feeling of pain when pressure is applied and here I was paying to have that pressure applied on the most painful area - trigger points! Soon I was crying out in agony, I still don't remember how I survived that first session but I do remember that afterwards all I wanted to do was to go home and curl up in bed - because of the physical pain and because of the mental anguish that accompanied the realization that treatment of my problem is going to be atleast as painful as the ailment itself!
Next day and day after I needed lot of determination to take another 30 minutes of the painful therapy but I did and soon 5 days were over. However, there wasn't any significant reduction in the pain. I consulted the doctor again, as planned, and he prescribed me one month of therapy. That's when I knew that I am not getting rid of this problem any time soon and I might as well try to understand the problem and the treatment course a little better.
So I started asking questions - to doctor, to Praveen, to other physiotherapists at the clinic, to anyone who was willing to answer my questions- as Praveen used to call me - I was a walking talking "question bank". Slowly I understood a few but very important things like - what is referred pain; what is the difference between trigger point pain and tenderness pain; what is myofascial pain; what activities, especially if repeated, would increase pain in which area of my body. A month got over, the relief was there but not enough so I started taking one hour of physical therapy every day.
During this time my fitness levels also took a nosedive. I had to stop all forms of exercising including yoga as that was increasing my pain and undoing the work done by my therapist. For an endorphin junkie not getting the daily fix is a big thing and on top of that I was in pain every moment of every single day. By now my pain had spread to my entire body, it was no longer restricted to right shoulder or iliopsoas. This was because I started using my left arm more as right was paining and soon that started paining as well. Similarly, I started to reduce the pressure on my right leg and soon my left leg was complaining. Guess nothing could escape this pain!
No comments:
Post a Comment