I had my first PT session yesterday for tendonitis (ankle). The therapist did five minutes of ultrasound, measured my foot angles, and gave me little stretchy exercises to do as “homework.”
My poor little foot has been hurting for two years and I already do daily stretches, use heat/ice, and take Aleve. I’m skeptical about PT for this condition – the only way I can see it making a difference is if ultrasound is miraculous.
Your opinions/experiences?
It’s worked miracles for me (rotator cuff injury and bulging disk). Give it a chance. Hope you’re feeling better soon.
Yeah, it works. It may take a few weeks, but it’s always fixed up my problems.
I had adhesive capsulitis in my left shoulder - so bad that getting dressed was a hassle and putting things on the second shelf of a cabinet was impossible. I went to one therapist who was a total waste. I switched to another facility and they were wonderful!! They worked me hard and had me do a wide variety of exercises and while I don’t have full movement, I’m lots lots better. I was kinda bummed when I had to end therapy - it was a nice break at the end of my day.
I have spinal stenosis between the L4 & L5 disks in my spine. Basically a narrowing that pinches nerves. Spent 4 months doing PT last spring/summer. And I continue the program that they developed for me. I am pain free for the first time after agony for over a year. So yes PT can work for you. Follow the program to the letter and do all your homework for best results.
For two years I slowly suffered slowly increasing pain in my right hip which ultimately turned into lower back problems. My physical therapist was the one who found out I had a weak gluteus medius muscle that was throwing everything else off. After 6 weeks of therapy, the hip pain was almost completely gone and the lower back pain had stopped. Today I consider myself completely cured thanks to the exercises prescribed by my physical therapist.
I have no experience with tendinitis so my advice to you is to find a good physical therapist and do what he/she says.
I don’t know anything about PT for tendonitis, but I injured both of my knees when I was in junior high, and ended up seeing a physical therapist for a year or so. The exercises definitely helped, but it isn’t going to be an overnight solution.
My husband is a physical therapist. Like anything else, there are good PTs and not-so-good PTs. If you’re not sure your therapist is really helping you, you could ask to switch to someone else in the same clinic. I know that in the clinics where my husband has worked, they just schedule people where they fit in or according to the request of the referring doctor*, but each PT usually is better at certain areas/injuries than others. If you ask, you may find that there’s a different therapist who really excels at fixing your particular injury.
*Referring doctors usually have a favorite therapist that they regularly refer to, but this is sometimes based on things other than therapy skills (personality, efficiency, ease of communication…things important to the doctor, but maybe not as important to the patient).
Lotta PT here on my lumbar spine, before and after surgery. Also, fair bit on my neck, no surgery yet. Both of these were quite helpful. Advantageously, they did their good with very little risk of adverse outcome and very little collateral damage, which compares favorably with surgery in many cases.
Also had PT on my shoulder, which was less helpful. However, the place I went to for my shoulder seemed really slipshod, disorganized, dirty, and not very good people there. The place was full of worker bees, and one morning a week some really top notch therapist came in for a little while to look over what everybody was doing and to examine and talk with the patients with more difficult problems.
It was after the shoulder experience that I found a different PT to handle both my spinal problems. Like night and day. This place was a tightly run ship, full of happy bright employees running around and being completely helpful and capable. One of the most impressive businesses of ANY kind I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with. To top it off, remember the big deal expert who showed up one morning a week at the other place? The other 4.5 days a week, she was one of the worker bees in THIS place.
That was like my first day. After that it got inceasingly more challenging, and six weeks in things are improving nicely. Of course, I’m working on building up ankle strength after being in a cast for 10 weeks (broken ankle and tendon damage). I don’t know how well it works for more chronic conditions.
I had PT for severe tendinitis in my right arm/hand–severe enough to be career-ending. Here’s what PT did for me:
I can write now (I could not even sign my name to a check).
I can use a mouse on a computer.
I have most of my strength back, although as my PT pointed out, I really truly screwed my arm and then ignored the symptoms so had a very nice downward spiral going on.
Mostly she helped me see my injury as the serious situation it was. Until then, I blew it off, sucked it up and kept playing (oboist). After about 6 months of therapy, I’d gotten about as healthy as I could get. I cannot return playing, however–that’s just flat not possible.
Oh and a funny–she prescribed an ice massage and I was all excited hearing the word “massage” and completely skipping over the ice bit. Imagine my surprise when she handed me what was essentially a block of ice in some sort of holder and told me to rub it over my hand.
Thanks for the replies. I guess my issue is that the stretches feel kind of pithy and not really different from what I’ve been doing for myself. Hopefully, the ultrasound will do something . . .
They tend to start out easier on you, I think. At the end of my first week of PT (broken wrist, just out of the cast), I was thinking it was pretty easy - until she bent my wrist downwards and I grabbed the table in response. Their job seems to be to find moves that hurt and then assign them to you. 
3 weeks out of the cast, my ex-broken wrist is nearly as flexible as the other one, and I’ve started strength training.
No guarantee it will work but… Last time I went the therapist pointed out things I was doing to aggravate my back. Changing that was as important as the actual therapy.
I would avoid long term use of OTC pain medicine.
I’ve had PT a couple of times and it always worked very well for me. Stick with it; it takes a bit of time.
Yeah, time’s the key. In February 2005, I broke my right arm badly, near the wrist. During the healing process, the bones did not line up properly and they had to go back in to install a plate, resulting in my arm being in a cast for close to three months total. When I came out of the cast, my wrist had effectively zero range of motion. After six months of twice-a-week physical therapy (thanks, Eva, on the off chance you happen to be a Doper) I managed to get back to about 70% of my pre-accident RoM. I will say that the bulk of the benefit took place in the first three months or so, and I was told that whatever I had at the end of six months was all I was ever going to get, and that seems to have held true.
Most of the PT involved stretching, dexterity exercises, and, eventually, strength-building; the one ‘hmmm…’ treatment was the little electrical device that I would be hooked up to and that sent a current through my arm for about ten minutes every session. I’d sit there with my arm going TWITCH…TWITCH…TWITCH and trying to sneak in a bit of a nap. Not sure if that really did anything, but I appreciated the break.
Don’t be afraid to tell them that! Don’t just assume that because they’re the professionals and this is what they tell you to do, that you can’t have any input into your own therapy. Maybe they start everyone out that way because most people don’t already do that exercise on their own at home. If they know you’ve been doing that without success, they can modify your program. But you have to tell them what’s working for you and what’s not or you cannot expect to heal.