Waste of time and money if you are getting physical therapy.
The physical therapy sessions I received here made things worse, not better.
I gave them two weeks (2 sessions each week) before I quit. By the end of the second week it was clear that I would walk into the session fairly functional and afterwards sitting/standing/walking would be difficult/extremely painful for the next 24-36 hours. After that I got better and could walk, stand, and sit just fine until I had another session which incapacitated me again. It was also obvious that I was not improving over the sessions - e.g. at the end of week 2, even after fully recovered from their treatment, I had no improvement from the start of that week. With good PT, significant improvement is seen from week to week.
Details:
I had received very effective physical therapy several years prior at another office. There the very skilled physical therapist did most of the patient contact: teaching new exercises with full explanations of how to do them, watching over several sessions of that exercise to make sure the patient fully understood the purpose of the new exercise and were executing it well, and in generally keeping an eye on things and monitoring progress. The junior people, who were very well trained in the exercises also, only worked with patients to set up and remind someone how to do the exercise the physical therapist had already taught them while given specifics of what to pay attention to for that patient and that exercise.
In this office:
-- Junior people did most of the work with the patient and they had only only beginner knowledge (of diagnosing issues, of exercises, etc.). Contact with the actual physical therapist was very limited and often not at all during a session.
-- A junior person did my diagnosis and the physical therapist sat in just for the last part. This resulted in a very simple diagnoses that never adequately addressed the problem. I repeatedly asked the physical therapist in charge each session to re-evaluate the problem as the exercises were not helping but while they nodded or repeated back my words this was never done. I repeatedly told the junior person the diagnoses missed something and explained why but they never responded (I think it was beyond their knowledge level).
-- I repeatedly told the junior person that worked with me that some of the exercises hurt (in a bad way). One junior person would say "do them anyway" or "do them until they hurt" - they hurt within a few reps and then hurt a lot (in a bad way). Other exercises were ineffectual. Another junior person had a more knowledge and sometimes would tell me to skip an exercise but it wasn't until the 3rd session that she fully explained one exercise she had me doing (so I had not been doing it right up until then despite me asking several questions on technique when she taught it).
-- The goal seems to be having you come do a lot of sessions not teach you what to do at home. My orthopedic Dr was shocked by this and it went against the very effective PT that I had previously received where detailed sheets on each exercise done were sent home each time. Here I had to ask a lot, each session, or I got nothing and even then they didn't always have the information to print out.
-- A good physical therapist can tell you what is causing the problem and what helps get it better (e.g. you are moving/sitting/etc. with this posture/movement which is creating ..... and you need to do .... instead to make things better). So you can make sure you are doing posture/movements/etc. at home that will not make things worse and will help you get better. They can tell what they issue is by the symptoms in their through diagnosis. I could never get any information about my condition that fit what was going on (they gave their very simplistic diagnoses instead). I kept saying we needed to figure out what was going on and they would nod and then do nothing. I finally figured what was the causing issue a few weeks after I quit coming here and yup, I had given them enough information the first visit that they should have figured it out on visit one. I continued to add information each week as I figured out more but they never corrected their original incorrect diagnoses.
The one thing they told me to do at home that was useful was to use ice.
The only thing in 4 sessions that helped at all was one of the physical therapist doing some stretching in my 2nd session. However, despite me asking, they didn't send any stretches home with me. It took me an hour of trail and error (with painful mistakes along the way) to figure out one stretch that made a big difference and using that a lot helped me improve a lot before session #3. They should have given stretches to do at home.
There are good PT offices around that are much more effective - I suggest you try some place else. read more
