Every physical therapist is surely familiar with the following phrases heard daily in their clinics:
"How long will it take before I feel better?"
"I haven't been good about doing my homework, I have to admit!"
We live in a world where we expect nearly instant gratification. Services are ordered up with a few taps of your phone screen. Products are bought now and paid for later. Patience, for many, has gone out the window.
Unfortunately, your body's incredible healing powers still require time. There is no app for an instant pain-free existence.
But there are steps and measures that you can take to ensure that you're on an optimal road to recovery from an injury. They include, but are not limited to, the following:
~Protecting and stabilizing an injury.
~Controlling pain through various modalities, including medicine, taping, massage, splinting, orthotics, to name a few.
~Getting educated about why you're experiencing pain in the first place.
~Working to improve mobility, stability and function in surrounding, non-painful joints while protecting an injured joint.
~Learning what movements are safe and which are provocative and detrimental.
~Building up tolerance and capacity through progressive loading once an injury has healed enough to be deemed safe and ready.
No matter from whom you seek help for treatment of a painful condition, your provider should aim to empower YOU, not make you become overly reliant on them to feel better. To be sure, there are plenty of circumstances where simple self-care won't suffice. Cancers need to be excised and radiated. Fractured bones need to be set and casted. Medications and injections may need to be used to control intractable pain and swelling. Unstable joints may require surgical intervention. But in many cases, the tools for healing are already in your possession. You simply need to be taught how to use them.
If your doctor told you that you'd need to take a 10 day dose of a particular medication to help eliminate an illness, you'd probably think nothing of following those orders in an effort to get healthy. Perhaps the home exercise programs that physical therapists design for every one of their patients should be called something else. Maybe it's the word exercise that is anathema to many folks.
That is why I'm going to stop asking my patients if they've done their home exercises, and start asking them if they've taken their movement medicine. Because if the restoration of pain-free living requires the exploration and implementation of movement, then failing to take ones medicine will surely delay positive outcomes.
The tools are there.
Seek expert advice to add the knowledge and encouragement.
Be patient with yourself and the healing process.
Do the work.
Take your medicine.
Those are your keys to success.
