The whole is more important than in individual part

I fired my Physical Therapist today. A few weeks ago I posted that the Pelvic Pain specialist I saw recommended that I do physical therapy for the abdominal pain and the vaginal pain I’ve been dealing with for a while. He suggested a particular PT place in my area that does the vaginal work. Evidently they are the only ones that do it here. I asked about Huntsville Pool &; Land, which is where I’ve been going for the last few years. They deal with a lot of Fibro and special needs people and understand us. I’ve been to the place he recommended in the past for my migraines and neck issues and both times they ended up failing me out with no help. He said I could go to HP &L but that I’d probably end up having to go to this other place for a few visits for the vaginal stuff. With that in mind, I decided I’d just give the other place a try and see what happened.

What happened was that they flared up my Fibro. The first visit was insanely painful, but nothing compared to the fourth. In all I saw 3 different therapists at this place. One didn’t really do much and therefore I had no reaction, good or bad, following the visit. Another seemed to help initially but by the time I got to my car I was feeling pain again. The one I saw on the first and fourth visits, however, caused me agony both during the visit and after. During my fourth visit she literally had me in tears and trying to jump off the table to get away from her. Even when I told her no more, she kept going. I woke up the next day in a flare. At that point I knew that if I kept going there my abdominal pain might improve (it was actually pretty good for several days last week), but my Fibro would get worse. The therapist, Bridget, commented at one point that I was really flared up, because I seemed to react no matter where she touched me. At that point, I really wasn’t that bad other than in the abdominal area (IMO), and I told her “If you think I’m flared now, you should have seen me two years ago. You couldn’t have touched me.” That seemed to really shock her and she said that I was the worst she’d seen. It was at that point that I asked her if I’d be better off at HP&L. She kind of agreed that I might be.

In talking to her more today, she clarified that I’m not the worst she’s seen in my current state, but that my report of how bad I’ve been is worse than any other Fibor patient that she’s seen there. She said most of the Fibro patients they see are also doing some sort of water therapy and the worst is usually a 5 on the pain scale. A 5!? Really?! Seriously, if I was just at a 5 I probably wouldn’t even worry about therapy. A 5 I can live with and work through. Even this abdominal pain I can work through and live with, by simply not doing much. Unfortunately, it will spike when I do certain things and therefore it keeps me from living a full life. It was that comment that made me sure that I was making the right decision to have her discharge me. HP&L won’t be able to treat the vaginal pain but even Bridget said she thinks it’s related to the abdominal pain and if we can treat it that the deep vaginal pain would go away. So, there we have it.

In the end she was very nice about the whole thing. She tried to talk me into staying and seeing this other therapist that was going to come over and co-treat me on Thursday. She didn’t really want to accept that her treatment was flaring me up. She seemed stuck on the idea that if it was going to affect me it would be right after (or within just a few hours) rather than where I said I woke up the next day in a flare. I just don’t think she understands what a flare is, that it’s more than just pain. I just couldn’t do it. Even the movements that she had me do today to “measure” if there had been any improvement (for the discharge paperwork) increased my pain.

This isn’t the first time I’ve fired someone that I felt wasn’t helping me. We’ve only got so much time and so much money, we can’t waste it on things that are hurting us. Sometimes, you just have to move on. photo credit: brainware3000 via photopin cc