OT for right wrist

[redbird]

I had my first visit with the occupational therapist (Emily) today. She examined me, carefully, including measuring range of motion (with two different protractors) and grip strength, and asking me to move my wrist and hand in various ways and stop when it started to hurt, so she could see when that was. I have two exercises. Among other things, my forearm muscles are very tight, in both arms but especially the right, which is the one that has been bothering me.

The therapist told me to do ten reps of each, 3-5x a day, to start, and if it's going well increase it to 20. She also advised me to try wearing the wrist brace some of the time during the day. I will be seeing her again next week, and she will see whether I am doing better, worse, or neither.

This is all promising. I did one set of each exercise half an hour ago, while staying behind a closed door to avoid someone who came to pick up more of our moving boxes. That was okay, but now the wrist is starting to hurt. [I'm copying and pasting this from one server to another, to save my hands. If you think you've seen it before, yes you have.]

Comments

[sine_nomine]

You may be more experienced with PT than I but Emily's recommended repetitions of exercise sounds like a lot of usage, to me (who has done an alarming amount of PT).

What are your impressions?

[redbird]

I hadn't thought about that, and part of what I noticed was how little time it took ten reps of each of two exercises. So, thinking about this a little: The PT I've had for other body parts was fewer repetitions--starting with as few as five, and working up to two or three sets of nine, ten, or twelve reps.

However, these hand exercises seem gentler than my shoulder, leg, and hip PT exercises, in part because I'm not lifting, pushing, or pulling on anything. One is: "Hold hand out, thumb up. Rotate palm down, then up," stopping if/when it starts to hurt.

[otter]

I found, with the shoulder PT I did the past year or two, that myofascial release therapy helped with the tightness and made it easier to do the PT exercises/for the exercises to be effective.

I'm hopeful for you, too.

[thnidu]

I misinterpreted your subject line as "off topic for right wrist" and thought "How can part of your body be off topic on your own blog?"