A couple of weeks ago, while I was busy doing my Surgery Diaries set of posts marking the six-year anniversary of my operations, the physio I had been seeing over the last few months decided that she was happy enough with my progress that I didn’t need to see her anymore, until my next set of problems arises, that is.
I’d gone originally because the backs of my knees had decided that they wanted to give me some grief after we’d had the kind of winter that I spent yesterday’s post complaining about. My muscles and I have a mutual hatred of the cold, as you all know by now.
So, back to the physio I went to try and nip it in the bud before it got any worse and she did all the right stretches and gave me some exercises that would fix it. I was amazed at the fact that I could do them all within the space of about five minutes before I’d even got out bed in a morning! (They were lying down exercises, I wasn’t being lazy) . I found that because there was someone there watching my progress who would be able to tell if I hadn’t done my homework, I actually did them.
As well as this, we worked on trying to improve the way that I stood to improve my walking and posture generally. It was really quite funny at first. As she tried to help me stand straight to show me what it would look (and feel) like, my limbs pretty much decided that they would what they wanted and not listen to anyone else. As soon as my knees were put right, my already aligned shoulders would go back to how they felt most comfortable, then my hips would follow their lead and we’d have to start all over again. Eventually though, the physio won and I was standing tall and straight. It felt really odd, like I was stood curled up in a ball, but I could see from the mirror that I wasn’t. It felt really comfortable and made me ache quite a bit.
After a few weeks (and lots of practice) I’ve managed to get to the point where I can just about do it for myself as long as I’m holding on to something. It still takes a while to ‘stack’ (they called it stacking) my head, shoulders, hips, knees, and feet all at once, but as long as I’m patient I can do it! For now I’m working on doing to for short bursts while I’m stood talking to people on my walking frame. I’d love to know what it looks like to others while I stand there, doing a sort of frustrated dance type thing that it takes to get everything lined up properly so I’m standing straight. I have now decided that I’m personally going to start calling this process the Make Sure I’m Standing Up Straight Dance, mostly for my own amusement.
viewfromawalkingframe 
I know the stand up straight dance very well!!
Last time I had a course of physio, we concentrated alot on my posture, making sure I stand as straight as possible and don’t round my shoulders. I have the physio’s words burned on my brain and can almost hear his military style instruction ‘head up, shoulders back, hips forward etc’…..
I sometimes stand in my room infront of my full length dressing mirror practicing, especially when choosing outfits to go out in!!!
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Haha, I’m sure you’re way better at the dance than me. I hope it gets easier.
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practice makes perfect! the hardest thing is trying to to get my hips straight when my knees and ankles are being held straight in my splints and gaiters. It is (just) possible, when having physio he was talking about using a standing frame – I haven’t used one of them since I was a kid!!
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I can imagine that that would be quite tough, Do your splints come over your knees too? I’ve never used a standing frame, but they don’t look pleasent.
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no, I have had ones that did, but when I’m doing physio I wear my gaiters over my slpints so that my knees and ankles are held straight so I can concentrate on the rest of my posture, and it gives me a really good stretch without too much effort (which is all good with me!!)
Standing frames are actually more comfy than they look!!
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Ah now I understand. What are the over the kneeones like? I only ever had below the knee ones.
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they are pretty good, I wore them for a couple of years after I had my major surgery. The are a type of afo that has a plate type thing up the front (looks a bit like long shin pads that footballers wear), that goes over the knee forcing it straight. It make life easier cos I didn’t have to keep thinking about keeping my knees straight.
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That sounds interesting. I had below the knee afos for years but they always kept blistering my feet and I couldn’t put them on mysel so that’s why we’ve decided to try the callipers.
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I’ve worn afos of some sort or another since I was tiny, I actually quite like them, I customise the with stickers and graphics and have had them in lots of different colours. At the moment I have one purple with a black union jack with born this way in red lettering, and one black one with purple union jack.
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They sound really cool 🙂
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