Haddow Massage Therapy

04/24/2026

*RICE BUCKET REHAB*

It's cheap, that's obvious. But why is it good?

training is really common in grip based sports, and it's probably one of my favorite ways to approach hand rehab in folks with considerations.

We can effectively scale the resistance, and rate of force production as high or as low as we like, and barring complications with contact sensitivity and the like, this is can a great way to approach homecare for things like , , , and the like.

04/22/2026

04/22/2026

Living with chronic illness is alienating.
The thing is, we're not alone in that, because the core part of that alienation - that "otherness" isn't unique to chronic illness.

If we were to look at everyone who is "other" relative to what our society and infrastructure is built around, my suspicion is that more than half of us fit that description.

There's a deep, permeating sadness in realizing the society you live in deems you unworthy of support. You see it every time there's an argument about government spending. There's always a "reasonable" budget that miraculously has room for jets and airports, but somehow doesn't have room for hospitals and social support.

This is the reality of living with , , or any other circumstance of life that creates nucleation points for otherness.

is expected to be difficult, sure... But it's already hard enough staying afloat, we don't need to be handed an anchor.

04/21/2026

168 hours.
That's what each of us has to work with per week.

But what about sleep?

Well, we can take that out because it's a sunk cost. We all know we have to do it.

If you tell someone you sleep for 30-40 hours a week, nobody calls it lazy, or says you're making it up... They just believe you because sleep is normal.

But normal is relative.

It's not normal to spend double digit hours on pain management and rehab per week, but it IS if you have .

Today I'll likely go through 3-6 movement sessions of various sorts. The elbow is a certainty - it's getting better but it's likely still 1-2 months away from getting back to climbing.

Also on the menu:

Lower back spasm yesterday. Still sore.
Right shoulder dislocation last night. I'm looking forward to getting back to climbing as it's helped my shoulders greatly and they're missing it.
Finally my last certainty for today is my neck. That's another normal one though, as it's a factor in some of my neuropathies.

There are weeks I spend almost as much time on managing my as I do sleeping. Now that's not just because of the amount of rehab I have to keep freedom for, but also because of the amount of sleep the EDS prevents me from getting... But that's something for another video.

04/20/2026

Fun fact: connective tissue diseases are diseases of the entire system, rather than a single structure. As a result, simple conditions like are more likely to present with a constellation of less common comorbidities.

In my case, I have symptoms compatible with impingement, as well as symptoms more compatible with . There has been both the impact on motor function as with PIN, as well as the pain associated with supinator syndrome.

This might sound unusual, but when you're dealing with this kind of presentation becomes much more common.

The goal becomes less about addressing any single symptom than about gradually reducing the constellation.

Triceps work has proven very helpful in building more of a feeling of strength again, but if I do it before a warm-up, it flares up the tennis elbow resulting in a weirdly better and worse feeling elbow.

Kind of annoying, but also kind of fascinating!

04/17/2026

Range, resistance and rate exploration today.

means checking in regularly. The software doesn't always understand the hardware, so we need our daily hot fixes to bring the two up to speed.

and exploration is a great way to get a feel for what's cranky, unstable or restricted feeling, and then challenge those bits and pieces.

essentially boils to

04/15/2026

Every day is the same.
Wake up.
Inventory.
Stress test.
Go.

This is . When we move, we hurt.
When we relax, we hurt more.
If we move too much though, we hurt even more.

The key is not to get it perfect, but to try to navigate it with the least complication.

Today I work 11-8 which is basically a perfect workday for me. I don't have any breaks however, so I need to make sure that I'm nice to myself or tomorrow I won't be able to work.

isn't a disease of "optimal", it's a disease of "good enough" until there just isn't a good enough.

If you know people in your life who suffer from , please take the time to recognize that we have to suffer this stuff alone - it needs to be done in the background, simply because of the fact that usually nobody believes us.

04/13/2026

GRWM as I convince my body it's not a defective tamagotchi 😉

is... Spicy.

Things dislocate or sublux out of place, tissues tear and avulse easily, and we generally heal really slowly. ..And that's just looking at it mechanically.
That's not even getting into the metabolic dysfunctions and comorbidities like syndrome, , and so on.

Used to be I could talk to my Dr about how I'm managing things, but nowadays family drs have significant restrictions on appointment billing, limiting the scope of each appointment and making them effectively incompatible with the kind of care patients like myself require.

Between a healthcare system that's abandoned us, and friends and family who dismiss us, we usually have to learn to manage on our own as best as we can.

04/10/2026

Nice to be back in the office after a week

04/03/2026

*SHOULDER INSTABILITY*

It's what we see when our mobility exceeds our ability to constrain it.
aren't inherently dysfunctional, but if we can't control that mobility we can start running into real problems.

My shoulders have classically been one of the more problematic areas of my body; if I relax while I'm standing, the weight of the right arm still kind of slides it out of place, even after years of rehab, climbing, and movement training.

But I can stabilize them with a lot less difficulty now. Making that work for me meant I had to start with the basics by building the ability to stabilize at the joint while taking my through a full range. In this case, I'm aiming for safe control over pulling from, and being pulled into, cross body adduction. This is tangential to my most vulnerable positions, and for days where I'm a little less stable this isn't too unsafe to explore.

It might not look like much, but it took years to get here. Managing rehab, and just... any is mostly dancing that whole "2 steps forward, 1 step back" jig.

Hope you have a great rest of your day!

03/31/2026

*BULGARIAN SPLIT SQUATS SUCK*
Mostly just because I hate doing them... They're a great exercise.

Today, they're going to be the focus my ankle rehab. The has been reducing and I've been continuing to challenge greater and greater resistance through dorsiflexion.

This is my first time doing 🏋️ in a few weeks, so I'm trying to be deliberate. Even while I'm focusing on a point off camera my reps are still less stable than I'd like. It's always a process.

A big part of management is making your workouts reasonable for you. I love exercises like these (in effect, if not in practice... 😬) because I can scale them to meet me where I'm at.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!

03/27/2026

The workouts before the workouts are the tricky part.
I can lift heavy pretty well, but if I want to do so regularly and recover effectively, I need to do a lot of pre and post work.

Living well with means finding a way to work your specific care into your general care. My needs to be scaled back to respect my recovery rate, and my .

I've had a lot of injuries and a hell of a lot more dislocations/subluxations, so my physical well-being needs to respect that.
I also tend to heal poorly, and recover slowly, so I need to try to listen to my body, which I'm ALSO objectively terrible at.

And this is before even getting into discussions on diet, recovery, rest, etc.

Hope you have a great day!