Or maybe its not hand therapy anymore because it seems to be morphing into other things which is to be expected (I guess). So after wrenching on my hand to get some more range of motion out of it today we worked on my left shoulder which is being a bugger after my races now. It is the chain reaction thing. You know.....can't use your hand for a while so everything up to your shoulder gets weak. Sweet. I was looking forward to this moment.
Thank goodness I thought ahead and was doing shoulder exercises when my hand was immobilized (yeah, THAT was pretty interesting) trying to foresee this problem before it occurred. And by doing so I held it off for 4 months but here it is now bugging me and I will have to do some more strengthening on it to get it to where it was before.
Icing the dang shoulder now...... ho- hum.
I forgot to mention that at my last hand therapy appt I met the most determined man I have ever met. He is an extremely successful triathlete who just lost 2 fingers and half of his thumb in an hand saw accident. They tried to save the fingers but it didn't take. It was only a month ago that the initial accident happened, only a week ago that he had to go back under the knife to have them removed and now he is already thinking about how he is going to swim and bike again!! To talk to him you would think nothing was wrong and that is because its not. As far as he is concerned, you move on and you figure it out.
He and I were talking about how it can and will work for him. There is not a chance that he won't be out there racing either. That is clearly not his personality. He mentioned that he will just have to watch things like veering to the left during his swim stroke because it was his left hand that lost the digits.
He will be just fine though because he has the best personality to get through something like this. It was nice to talk to someone that was coming where I was coming from with my hand surgery. Someone that was totally on board with getting back into life asap and will do everything to get there.
He even came out with his wife to cheer everyone on in the cyclocross race in Heber on Saturday! That is the spirit and I can tell that his will never be broken. Such a great attitude and I can't wait to see how his tri season turns out!!
3 comments:
I saw them out there...I was wondering where you were importing fans from!
OK, as the Hand Therapist, i had no idea you were taking pictures, you sneaky thing!!! Fair to say, you have been a stellar patient, and motivate so may others, regardless of the torture that i force you to endure to get back to your sport. Thank god no photo of me! You will only continue to improve, and show others who are in the unfortunate injury fraternity, that you can only be better for having gone thru such an experience, and those you meet during the time, can have lasting wonderful input. I feel fortunate for having such wonderful clients who are willing to let me do my stuff.
Hi Hand Goddess - which you truly are BTW. Thanks for finding my blog!! And as for the torture, well, it is worth it in the end right? And you are correct about the wonderful people you meet during such a horrific time. We all make a great support system for each other indeed!
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