This could explain a few things...
Aug. 4th, 2013 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_lucy21So, PT kind of sucks, which I knew, since this is the third or fourth time I've done it (2nd for my back- I also had fairly extensive PT when I was a teenager for the nerve problem in my wrists. Which is flaring up right now, annoyingly enough. Probably because everything else hurts).
Apparently, it's not just my lower back that doesn't move right. It's also my upper back/thoracic region that doesn't move right. So, really, there's just one spot that does what it's supposed to do. The rest of it is jacked up (that may be a technical term). I'm being good about the home exercises (not 100% but at least 90% which is really about as much as I can reasonably expect myself to handle. Going for 100% tends to just lead to obsessive, compulsive and self-flagellating behavior). But damn, this hurts more than it did before I started therapy. Although, that could be because I was being extremely careful to not irritate things and PT is designed to irritate things.
I was doing some reading on tight muscles, though, to see if I could possibly come up with some reason why I have such tight muscles and why they are so chronically tight. Seriously, I was the most inflexible kid, ever. One of the reasons I got "asked to not continue with" (read: kicked out of) pre-school ballet and gymnastics was because I both lacked the hand-eye coordination and the flexibility to actually preform the moves correctly (the other reason was I was a little, um, hyper. And inattentive. Clue for my eventual ADHD diagnosis right there). My mom says I was the most inflexible kid she'd ever seen (and she didn't mean personality wise, although, I was that too. If you think I'm uptight now, I am nothing compared to what I was as a kid). Well, apparently, there's something called Sensory Motor Amnesia, and reading the descriptions sounds an awful lot like me. Chronically tight muscles that don't relax with stretching and massage? Yup. Chronic tension headaches? Yup. TMJ Disorder? Yup. Lower back pain? Yup. Upper back and shoulder pain? Uh-huh. Difficulty relaxing to sleep? That too. So, I'm going to ask the PT if she knows anything about this tomorrow when I go for my session. Apparently, with this sort of thing, you can stretch all you want, and it won't ever get better, and that has definitely been my experience with things like yoga and stretching. I'd prefer not to shell out $700 for something that's not actually going to make a difference, you know?
Apparently, it's not just my lower back that doesn't move right. It's also my upper back/thoracic region that doesn't move right. So, really, there's just one spot that does what it's supposed to do. The rest of it is jacked up (that may be a technical term). I'm being good about the home exercises (not 100% but at least 90% which is really about as much as I can reasonably expect myself to handle. Going for 100% tends to just lead to obsessive, compulsive and self-flagellating behavior). But damn, this hurts more than it did before I started therapy. Although, that could be because I was being extremely careful to not irritate things and PT is designed to irritate things.
I was doing some reading on tight muscles, though, to see if I could possibly come up with some reason why I have such tight muscles and why they are so chronically tight. Seriously, I was the most inflexible kid, ever. One of the reasons I got "asked to not continue with" (read: kicked out of) pre-school ballet and gymnastics was because I both lacked the hand-eye coordination and the flexibility to actually preform the moves correctly (the other reason was I was a little, um, hyper. And inattentive. Clue for my eventual ADHD diagnosis right there). My mom says I was the most inflexible kid she'd ever seen (and she didn't mean personality wise, although, I was that too. If you think I'm uptight now, I am nothing compared to what I was as a kid). Well, apparently, there's something called Sensory Motor Amnesia, and reading the descriptions sounds an awful lot like me. Chronically tight muscles that don't relax with stretching and massage? Yup. Chronic tension headaches? Yup. TMJ Disorder? Yup. Lower back pain? Yup. Upper back and shoulder pain? Uh-huh. Difficulty relaxing to sleep? That too. So, I'm going to ask the PT if she knows anything about this tomorrow when I go for my session. Apparently, with this sort of thing, you can stretch all you want, and it won't ever get better, and that has definitely been my experience with things like yoga and stretching. I'd prefer not to shell out $700 for something that's not actually going to make a difference, you know?