A few weeks ago, we posted an image on our social media detailing the stages our clients go through when they are recovering from an injury, or persistent pain. If you missed it, the picture detailing the stages you may go through as you recovery from an injury, are below.
Read on for a little more detail about what we mean by your “stages of recovery”.
When we first see you for a new injury or pain, we may ask you to come back weekly to monitor your progress. Very often, we don’t give a lot of exercises or rehabilitation during this early stage, as we want to see how your body responds to treatment. If we throw too many factors into the first consultation, there are too many variables to monitor, and it’s hard to know exactly what’s helping your recovery.
When you come back for your second visit, we are monitoring what changes have occurred in your body since the first visit. You may also be experiencing less pain, or a change in your symptoms, and this helps us develop a management plan for your complaint. For example, if you come back and your range of motion (aka your movement) is less improved, then we may give you some exercises to help your mobility. Wheres if you come back and your muscle tightness or stiffness is the first thing that returns, then we may give you some stretches or self massage exercises.
This stage can also be crucial in working out your aggravating factors, eg the things that potentially caused the problem in the first place. If you walk away from your first treatment feeling amazing, and in a few days you wake up with neck pain again (for example) it might be time to look at your pillow. In short, your aggravating factors become more clear as you move through your stages of recovery.
As you progress, the time between your consultations may decrease. If we think you are on track, we may push your appointment out to 2 or 3 weeks. We are still wanting to check up on you, but we know that you have some management strategies at this point to stay on top of your pain.
The closer you are to recovered, you rely less on manual therapy, you are educated and most importantly, you have a plan to help manage your condition. We are still here if you need us, but you are getting back into your normal day to day routine.
For some of our clients, the persistent pain they present with is a common occurrence – for example they experience a milder form of the initial complaint once every few months. These clients feel that sometimes its best to stay on top of this pain, by coming in for maintenance treatment. They may attend once a month, or every 2 months. Mostly, their practitioners will guide them on how often they may choose to attend for a maintenance consultation.
In summary, and for the TLDR (too long didn’t read), when you are struggling with pain or an injury you need us most at the beginning, and less at the end.
