Discharged from physio

Posted in: Injury Time

At 08:25 this morning my physio decided there wasn't much more she could do for me long-term and that I was fit to take care of my own care.

(The irony of being up at 2am the night-before-starting-work doing experimental cooking with tabasco, popcorn, and whisky wasn't lost...)

I'm at a stage where I can walk pretty much like a normal person biomechanically. I say "pretty much" since I still have to avoid full heel impact so there's a bit of difference in my gait in that I tend to land flat-footed. It's also still uncomfortable walking generally so I try to avoid long distances. That said, with the aid of some mulled wine I managed to stay on my feet for much of the day during Santacon this year finally needing to be carried across a bridge after about 7hrs or so.

So my discharge form physio has occurred seven and a half months after my original accident. What's been interesting over the last few months is that each time I've been into physio I've had the impression I haven't improved too much and then when I've done the reference exercises it's clear there has been some improvement, sometimes marked.

For the physiologically curious, those references exercises are as follows...

They're all done barefoot with clothing rolled up so the physio can see what's going on. They're also all later-stage recovery, when I was actually at a point where I could physically attempt them.

Walking: initially this was on a padded mat and then hard wood gym floor. This shows basic biomechanics, gait, etc. As I've noted in previous blogs walking is actually one of the toughest exercises. We can get robots to ride bicycles but not walk, at least particularly well.

Standing on toes: strength test for calves and plantar fascia (muscle running along bottom of foot). There's some, we think, impingement of a tendon under the ankle bone on my right foot when my foot is (plantar-)flexed which causes a sharp pain. This is the only remaining sharp pain and only seems to manifest in this exercise(!)

Walking on toes: the physio is watching for strength and coordination to see if I can keep my foot flexed with all my weight temporarily on one foot. I can do this no problem now on my left foot and somewhat with my right. My bone structure's changed enough in my right foot that I cannot fully flex my foot any more anyway. My career as a ballerina is over!

Walking backwards on toes: more strength and coordination test.

Bouncing and jogging on a trampette (small trampoline): a more dynamic test. Good for active recovery too; I had this prescribed in my advanced rehab courses (which embarrassingly I only showed up to one of).

Today I could do all these quite easily. Woohoo! No more hospital until my year review in June.

Posted by Paul Makepeace at January 3, 2006 11:13 | TrackBack