sore arm

How long did you have to wait to do physical therapy?

1 Comments

You can do light PT

by Theknotguy - 2015-05-05 10:05:12

You can do light PT almost from day one. You don't want to do anything that will aggravate the PM wound but short walks should be OK.

The main thing is to give the wound time to heal and scar tissue to form. Discussions on this forum about not lifting weights or raising the arm above the shoulder are, as I said, used to give the body time to heal. We haven't been able to prove or disprove that activity will cause the leads to come loose unless they were going to come loose anyway.

So it's a good idea not to raise the arm above the shoulder on the PM side and not lift a weight over ten pounds on the same side as the PM. I feel everyone has forgotten and you probably will too, don't get excited about it, just don't make it a regular habit.

You also don't want anything irritating the PM wound, so anything that does that is out. That's why I suggested short walks that aren't strenuous. Any exercise is better than none at all but too strenuous exercise too early can break open the wound. Then you've got a real mess on your hands - possible infection, all sorts of nasty stuff.

Once the wound has healed you can start doing more strenuous stuff, but you still have to be careful for a while. I was out throwing the ball for the dogs, did it a little too hard and pulled the scar tissue. Hurt like hell and it took me an additional six weeks to get over the soreness.

It's much better to exercise but not do it too strenuously until you can tell things are working well.

Because of additional trauma, it was seven months before I could even try to do "normal" things. Now, at a year and a half I'm better than 100% of what I was before the PM. It's great to do physical exercise I want to do and not feel like I'm going to pass out. It was worth the wait.

Hope everything else is going well for you. My best wishes go out for you.

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