Advice for my friend--any PTs??

[Crankin]

Thanks, Knott.
Hey, do you know that your PM mailbox is "full?"

[KnottedYet]

Yeah, I know... I couldn't keep up with it, so I just gave up on it.

[Trek420]

Yeah, your mailbox is full.

[NbyNW]

I'm not a PT but have personal experience with a similar injury --

Just wanted to add some thoughts on healing time and pain & ROM. It can take a LONG time to get back to pre-injury condition. I still sometimes limp if I am tired or not concentrating on how I am moving (my walking mechanics weren't great pre-injury, it's just something I am always working on).

I had to cut my PT short after only three weeks, because I couldn't pass up an opportunity to study abroad that year. I took my PT homework on the road and followed up with my PT after I got back. On the one hand, maybe it wasn't ideal to have that break in care, but on the other hand, having that elapsed time gave us some ideas as to what was working and what else we needed to focus on.

About two years after my injury, someone told me that where you are after a year is where you're going to be. Thank goodness I didn't get that memo!
At that point I was still in pain on a daily basis, still had something of an old-person shuffle when I first got out of bed in the morning, but I was still making progress! It took that long for me to be able to do some things that I had not been able to do since getting hurt; it has probably only been in the last year where I feel like I'm out of injury mode and more in daily maintenance mode.

For a while, to get on my bike I would stand on my good leg, lift the bad leg up, hug my knee to chest and guide my ankle over the top bar. For my first year I favored my folding bike with its low stepover.

The best thing for me to get my ROM back after I was done with PT, was to keep on moving. I had a desk job but tried to move around as much as possible. A good part of that is knowing when to work through some discomfort and when to ease off so as not to make things worse.

I had done a lot of pilates before my injury so I used that as my baseline for what I wanted to be able to do after my PT discharged me, in terms of strength and flexibility. I had an instructor who also had a PT background and she helped me to adapt exercises for my limited ROM and gave me exercises that would help improve my ROM.

This month is the 4th anniversary of my injury. It's been a 2-steps-forward-3-steps-back kind of year. I can do everything I was able to do before my injury with no restrictions. I have my pre-injury ROM but often feel clumsy when I am moving around. My mind-body awareness of the injury site is a daily thing. I don't go a day without thinking about it. Add that to brushing my teeth and cleaning my contact lenses: I need to stretch, massage and move in order to get through my day.

Lying to his PT is a bad idea. Having a frank discussion about expectations and goals would be a good one.

[Crankin]

Well, he went on another ride this morning, before going to the PT. He probably didn't get my email with Knott's advice until after the visit. He's out of town until the end of the week, and I am going away Friday, for the weekend, so I won't get updated until then. His wife, my friend, came by for a swim after work. From our discussion, I am pretty sure he will give the PT the boot. He can work with a trainer at the gym to do some of the stuff he's doing.
He's very rule bound, so even though my DH told him he needed to push the limits on this and do what he needs to (based on his own experience after getting stents), because sometimes we know our own bodies better than anyone, he sort of just did what he was told. I think that is over and getting on the bike did the trick to make him see this. We already have a ride planned for the 18th; 40 hilly miles up to NH.