10/31/2023
Since it is the last day of National Physical Therapy month, I want to share a PT success story:
A friend of mine reached out about 2 months ago that her knee was bothering her from constantly kneeling and squatting at work (she works at a preschool). The problem started over a year ago, but had recently gotten worse to the point it was bothering her when she was walking and she was starting to notice some swelling in her knee.
Not knowing the extent to which it had been bothering her, I didn’t offer much advice other than what I thought the diagnosis might be.
Fast forward 6 weeks and she reaches out again and asks if there is a good knee stabilization brace I could recommend because she was told to get one. She ended up getting one, which provided some relief and helped minimize her swelling but was still having pain in her knee when she wasn’t wearing the brace. I asked if she would come see me so I could look at her knee and see what was going on.
The next week, she came to me and told me the whole journey she has been on for the past several months trying to figure out how to make her knee feel better. Turns out that she had seen 3 other healthcare providers (who were not physical therapists) who explained that the knee problem was coming from her spine. Although she had also been intermittently experiencing back pain and the treatments she received affected her low back symptoms (2 providers made it better, 1 made it worse), nothing was helping her knee.
When I evaluated her, I told her that her knee problem was stemming from weakness in her hip muscles (which was probably also contributing to her back pain), and I gave her some exercises to practice on her own to try to get the hip muscles to turn on.
Ten days later, I got a text from her saying that the exercises made her knee feel so much better. She still feels something occasionally when she squats down, but no pain on a regular basis or with walking. PT exercises for the win!!
I share this story because often times people have a nagging issue for far too long before they seek treatment (or seek the correct treatment) when the solution may be simpler than you think. If you feel like you have a problem and no one knows the answer, try PT! One session might not fix the problem right away, but it may be the beginning a lifelong journey towards keeping your body strong and healthy!
