Occupational Therapy

The biggest thing going on with me medically right now (minus this dratted cold!!!!) is my occupational therapy. I have been doing therapy for my hand and wrist for 2 weeks now. I go twice a week (Monday and Wednesday) for about 45 minutes to an hour. She started out by doing a full evaluation to evaluate my range of motion and and strength. This evaluation showed that I had decreased strength and range of motion in addition to muscle atrophy in my right wrist. This was not surprising as I had not been using it and had it in a brace. We started with basic non-weight bearing range of motion activities. This was to start to get my wrist moving again. We are slowly adding on strengthening exercises but with my EDS (connective tissue disorder) we have to do this very slowly so as not to re-injure my wrist.

I have lots of home exercises that I need to do to keep up the range of motion. I have to roll my wrist in several different directions, squeeze a special sponge repeatedly, make certain formations with my hand and wrist, and do certain exercises with silly putty (my personal favorite) all multiple times every day. These exercises are expanded and made harder by my therapist as I progress through therapy.

My therapist is absolutely fantastic!!!! I was nervous about doing occupational therapy because my last experience with therapy (physical) was not a good one! That was before we knew about my EDS diagnosis and they ended up doing more damage than good to me. This time around I know a  lot more about my conditions and my physical limits, so I was hopeful that this would help. I have a sheet that I print out and bring to each one of my doctors appointments that lists my conditions, surgical history, and medications and I gave one of those to my therapist as well for my chart. This was on a Monday and by the time I came back for my next appointment on a Wednesday she had researched not only EDS, but all of my conditions to see how they would affect my therapy! It was so nice for her to take the time to look up  my medical conditions so that she knew how best to help me and most importantly how not to do more damage! She also is very innovative in the ways that we do my exercises. She is constantly changing them and modifying them to fit me and my needs.

So far my wrist has been starting to feel better. I am not wearing my brace all of the time and she has been taping it with athletic tape to help stabilize it while we are weaning out of my brace. The cortisone shot that my orthopedic surgeon did also seemed to help tremendously. I have about one week left of the anti-inflammatory medication that my surgeon prescribed as well. In the next couple of weeks we will go down to 1x a week of therapy instead of 2x. I will write another update soon on everything else that has been going on with me. Thank you for continuing to pray and send positive thoughts my way!