Physical Therapy Update–Assisted Movement

So far, I’ve only done passive movements at my physical therapy appointments.  Basically, I lie down on my back while my therapist manually manipulates my arm in various directions, rubs out the muscles in my shoulder, and tries to increase my range of motion while my arm is just dead weight.

Yesterday, though, was 4 weeks post-op.  This was the first big milestone, which brought about some changes.  First, my therapist added assisted passive movements to my regimen, which meant adding pulleys and table slides. 

With the pulley hanging on the wall, I had to sit in a chair and pull down on one side of the pulley with my good arm while allowing the other arm to be pulled slowly up on the other side.  that was a lot harder than it sounds!  My arm didn’t want to go very high at all. Then I moved to sit at an angle so my arm was pulled slightly out and up, and that was so much easier! 

For table slides, I had to sit on a chair parallel with a table, rest my arm on a towel to reduce friction, and lean my body forward slowly, thereby sliding my arm forward at he same time without engaging the muscle at all.  Then I had to turn the chair slightly away from the table and repeat the movement, sliding my arm slightly out and forward. This was such a painful exercise!  The table slides are also added to my home therapy routine 3 times per day.

Second, the therapist removed the immobilizer pillow from my sling and refitted just the sling to my body.  No more waist strap, and my arm is no longer held out away from my body!  On the upside, it made it a whole lot easier to drive my van.  I was able to put my seat forward and tilt my steering wheel down to a more comfortable position again, and the sling no longer interferes with turning the wheel.  Much better!  The downside is that a new arm position is uncomfortable and not as restful.  It hurts a bit.

With all the changes, I found myself up a lot during the night in miserable pain!  It was so bad…probably worse than right after surgery…and I was so tired and didn’t know what to do with myself.  I was near tears and rocking myself on the edge of the bed.  I woke up 6 times.  I felt awful this morning. 

So today, I decided to avoid doing the table slides until I can calm my shoulder down a bit.  And for the pain, I decided to try the CBD Freeze roll-on I bought before my surgery to have on hand.  I used it a couple of times today, and it really helped…enough that I was able to take a nap.  At bedtime, I think I’m going to try the CBD Recover topical cream that you can rub in for pain and then hook up to my ice machine.for a while.  I’m just hoping to sleep better than I did last night!

I will stay in just the sling this way for 2 more weeks.  Then at 6 weeks post-op, I will reach another big milestone where I will transition to phase 2 of recovery, which involves active movement using the muscles in that arm.

Having this intense pain rear its ugly head when I was doing so well really caught me off guard.  I’m definitely willing to work hard for my recovery, but I hope I can keep this pain under control so I can really do the work that I need to do and give it my best effort.

I made good progress with some of my range of motion this week.  I already met and exceeded one of the 6-week goals, but I still have some work to do to reach the other 2 goals in these next 2 weeks.  External rotation continues to be the biggest challenge, but I did progress from –25 degrees to 15 degrees!  I have to get to 80 degrees to reach my goal.

I can do this, Lord willing!