Rehab Weeks 5 & 6

Week 5 was a partial repeat of week 4 with physio exercises to perform at my own leisure on my arm and now starting this week, my leg. You see I went to visit Joe my physio and although there was to be no progress with my arm, I asked for and received a set of exercises for my leg. When we were practising the exercises there was one particular exercise, 'the side leg lift' I knew I would have a lot of difficulty with and that exercise is when laying down on my side, my good side, I was asked to lift my bad leg up into the air and I couldn't lift it, not an inch, not even a millimetre, I couldn't for the life of me perform the exercise below.It's crucial that I regain this movement as the muscles that control this movement, the hip abductors which include the gluteus medius along with the gluteus minimus, in other words your bum muscles if not developed will leave you with a limp says Joe. The problem with my hip abductor muscles was not caused by the accident but rather the surgery. When they operated on me and inserted the metal work, the Dynamic Hip Screw, they naturally had to cut me open somewhere and its these abductor muscles that was cut open, a cut approximately 10 inches long.

Over the next week I am getting stronger because of the exercises. Since I cannot perform the side leg lift, Joe gave me an easier exercise called 'the clam' that will eventually strengthen the hip abductor muscles. Over the week I start to reap the rewards from performing the clam as I can now move my leg in a proper side leg lift, not a great deal and not for long but it's a start.

The clam exercise

Today week 6, I had another visit to see my Consultant and unlike last time when I saw a stand-in, today I got to see my Consultant who said that my hip has started to heal well but it's not time yet to start walking on it, not yet anyway but I can put a little weight through it which is great news.

I did find out something interesting though about my arm, he had said previously that bits of bone from my ulna was missing and today he expanded on that and told me that a large chunk of bone had been nuked in the fall and was only good for the bin also the only thing holding my bones fixed in the right orientation was the metal plate and screws and it will take time for the 'gap' in my bone as he called it to heal. It's amazing how the bones heal, here's a wiki on the process with an excellent x-ray showing how the bones reach out to each other to 'callus'. My Consultant also said the clicking in my elbow is the break in my radius bone setting slightly out of shape, come back in a year and if it's still a problem I can have it shaved.

So that's it, that's where I'm up to right now...