So often in our present Healthcare system we are spending less and less time with the patients asking questions and really understanding what is truly going on and where the source of the problem is located. Instead, we are doing a lot of testing which is not reliable all the time. In some offices, it is a fast way to get you out of the office in less time and then get you back in to discuss the details. You have heard me talk about how unreliable MRI’s are if that is the main information you are relying on. This can lead you down to over treatment with sometimes unnecessary injections or worse surgery.
Or maybe the doctors sent you to do more conservative care with physical therapy, but the place you went to, only looked at the body part where the pain is located and did not investigate it further to figure out where the source is coming from. This is also common and also can lead you down the path of surgery. So often a lot of the physical therapy places out there will see 2-4 patients per therapist, which makes it hard to truly understand the patient and spend time with them to figure out what is going on. Not to mention some therapist are not getting the personal and professional growth they need from their company or they are not deligent on their own to continue down the path of constant learning.
These are all problems and this is what happened to one of my recent patients. She had shoulder pain for years. She tried conservative care and then went on to have rotator cuff surgery. She was hurting worse after the surgery. She did not get better with 3 months of therapy at a place that had 3-4 patients per therapist. They just told her that she was at the end of her treatment even though she still hurt. She was not being evaluated to change things up and wonder why she is still hurting.
She finally came in to see one of our therapists. We sat down with her and asked a lot of questions. We wanted to rule out the neck as she was having some inconsistencies with her answers that were not all pointing that her shoulder was the problem.
We started the physical evaluation after asking her a lot of questions and what we found out was that she had a neck problem. No one looked at her neck. She had constant pain in her shoulder for 1 year, no relief. She could not move her shoulder to wash her hair or even putting clothes on. We took her pain away after treating her neck and showing what she could do on her own and what she need to adjust throughout the day to not irritate her symptoms. She could raise her arms to her head and now wash her hair. I got a text thanking me 2 days later because she was feeling so much better.
If you know someone or you are going through this very same problem of not getting any relief, maybe you have had surgery or maybe you are debating to have surgery and you are not getting better. reach out to us.
We will have a FREE conversation with one of our Physical Therapists. If we need to see you before you even spend any money with us to make sure we can help you, we will do that. We do not take on clients we don’t think we can help.
If you would like to set up a FREE conversation with one of our physical therapists, just CLICK HERE and you can fill out a form so we can get you set up with an appointment.
