Wrist Updates

I started PT the other day. My physical therapist is really nice, and knowledgeable. She finally was able to explain to me how recovery works, in a way that actually made sense to me (unlike all the other doctor's I've seen about this).

When you get injured, you're supposed to wear a brace for two reasons: 1) to reduce any swelling that might have occurred, and 2) to protect the injured part from movements that might injure it more.

However, wearing the brace results in weakness of bones, muscles, etc. So therefore, after awhile, you're supposed to reduce the amount you wear the brace (and do physical therapy) to gain back strength. You are not supposed to go from wearing the brace all the time to not wearing it at all.

After your wrist gets strong enough for daily activities (no brace at all plus some PT), you can start small on harder activities (strength training, viola playing). If the wrist gets tired or starts to hurt, you've done too much.

She said to think of viola playing like training for a marathon. The concert is the marathon. You can't just run a marathon without training for it and expect not to get injured. Therefore, I'm supposed to start slow with the practicing, and build up to the point where playing for 3 hours straight is no big deal, and I have enough stamina to do that. Then I'm prepared for the long rehearsals and the concert. After the concert, I'm supposed to take a break and not play at all for a little bit. Then I'm supposed to start over again for the new concert.

Finally, some good advice. The doctor I just saw the other day, who referred me to PT, told me I could strength train if I wanted to and it didn't hurt. I thought it was too good to be true, and I was right. All the other doctor's I've seen have told me to wear my brace as much as I can. I disagreed with that because of the whole "but it's weak... how is it supposed to get stronger if I keep wearing the brace?" thing. The doctor in Massachusetts had told me that my injury was a stress injury, so I should only play viola when I need to, to reduce chance of injury. I didn't agree with that, because of the whole "but I need to have stamina to do that sort of thing" thing.

Anyway, my physical therapist continued to freak me out by telling me that bone marrow edema is the predecessor to a stress fracture. So in my case, if I do the activities too suddenly or too intensely, I'm probably going to get a stress fracture, which would be horrible. If I had continued to strength train under the advice of the other doctor, it probably would have happened.

It's still unclear whether the lack of proper treatment at field camp is to blame.


In other news, ever since I've come back to North Dakota, I have felt very fatigued and exhausted. Probably it's from all the things on my to-do list, but also possibly I'm overtraining at the gym now that I'm walking everywhere again also. But it's so bad that I barely have the energy to do anything. Sigh. At least with the snow day today, I have a 5-day weekend to knock off some of this stuff. I've made progress today, and will continue to make progress such that I hopefully reduce this amount of stress.