My Journey with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."

- Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Physical Therapy

I went and saw my physical therapist today. I've been working with him for years, I feel like he's family. He's been with me since my very first knee, so he knows how I work. When you're a tough case it's good to have someone who has been there from the beginning. He's good with thinking about new ways to approach exercises to adapt them for me, which let me tell you is how we make all of my exercises.

Anyways, I'm going to start on some exercises to work on my lower abdominals. This is something I've been working on for a while. The idea is that because I have this hip issue, I compensate by rotating my pelvis forward and then trying to lock everything out because that's where I'm more stable. I unconsciously do this to protect myself because my joints aren't strong enough to support themselves alone, hence EDS.

So what I have to do now is retrain my body how to work. Since I’ve been locking out for so long it’s what’s most comfortable for me and I have to undo all of that, easier said then done.

The way you do that is to strengthen all of the muscles that I’ve avoided using the past years, so off to my exercises I go.

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