Thursday, April 1, 2010

Shoulder Replacement

I just wanted to share with you an interesting case of a little lady of the age of 80. She had a right shoulder replacement 5 years ago. Which she told me was doing fine until her PT handed her a rope and asked her to stretch her quadriceps over her shoulder. After that she had loss of range of motion in the new joint. What happened? Well if you meet this lady, she is one determined active lady, and she probably pulled on that rope pretty hard. Anyway, I am seeing her now 2 years post that incident. Why, she came to me was because the other shoulder had ended up with a impingement and bursitis. So if you can imagine, she was without use of either shoulder. She is a widow and it was making life difficult to do anything with her arm much above 70 degrees if that. And the pain was bringing her down. There is a happy ending to this story, keep reading. She came to me in late Nov. She also has a severe scoliosis of the right back with high levels of pain at times and low levels all the time. So my time was divided between two shoulders and a entire back. She came in once a week for therapy. In 5 weeks, her left shoulder had full range of motion and her posture had improved. I did ATM each and every time. I used NMT, cupping, stretching, AIS, muscle energy, and Muscle Activation as the entire treatment. Two weeks ago, we hit a milestone, the shoulder replacement side, finally responded and she could lift her arm to about 140 and the pain had subsided. She is so thrilled, she is swinging her arms in the air showing everybody. I should mention also, she was a very faithful student. She did her isometrics and ROM exercises at home. She is dancing, she is doing Ti Chi and best of all she hung a clock on the wall all by herself. Her back has so much djd, that at best we can help keep her pain levels lower. But as you can see, nothing is stopping her. Keep her in your prayers. And I hope you will help one of our elderly out of an impossible situation because of this posting. Take care, until next time. Don't guess, assess. Debbie

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