1st Hydrotherapy Session - 8 weeks post op

First Hydrotherapy session tonight (Tuesday) at the Avon orthopaedic Centre at Southmead Hospital, Bristol. Paul drove me. It was a long way from the main entrance into the hospital so I was glad I went on 2 crutches. First of all I had to answer loads of general questions about what I had had done and what I doing physio wise and what my goal of Hydro was “To be able to walk with out the crutches”. Then he checked my leg lifting and abduction on op leg. I could lift my leg to about 60/70 degrees!

I had to use the walking frame around the pool as  went down into the pool, I left the frame behind and used the hand rail to walk up, round and down. As I went down into the water if felt wonderful, lovely and warm. The water came up to my chest in the shallow end. I Spent a few minutes standing getting  used to the feeling of being held up in the water. Then I was given two woggle floats to old onto in front of me to use to balance on and walked across the pool.

It was a very odd feeling as I felt as though I might fall but the water would not allow me. During the session we did walking, high stepping, side stepping and holding on to the side to do abducting and moving leg backwards. It all felt ok. The we  did floating in the corner using the woggle and flexed knees alternately which felt good as my knees are feeling creaky! I had a rubber blow up ring put onto my op ankle when I was not flexing that one to support it a little.

The weirdest thing was getting back out of the water as I could feel myself getting heavier and less able to walk. So then it was back to the walking frame and back to reality of needing crutches to walk.

I really enjoyed the hydro and the plan is for to go for another solo session and then join a group.

The following few days I felt achy and my ROM reduced, I could only do a leg lift for a  few inches, and even if Paul helped me passively ,my leg was shaking at the top. I am sure this is all due to using the leg more and some Delayed Onset Muscle fatigue  from the hydro, but it is difficult to not feel down when things start to go backwards.

On the Thursday  after Hydro I tried a side lying leg lift. Big mistake NOTHING HAPPENED!! So perhaps this is another of those things that require me to just start by sending the message to the muscles and will eventually get the idea? I am guessing it is because my abductors have been asleep for 8 weeks due to the non weight baring? I try again in the Friday morning and still no movement. So I email my surgeon just to check this is OK. This was his reply:

“yes… its the hardest thing to do at the moment… don’t bother trying. do the same movement whilst standing, and continue until you can do it 30 times easily, then start to hold your leg out 18” for as long as you can. When you can do that for 30 seconds, start doing the same thing on your side.
On your side, try keeping your one bent initially (to make you leg shorter, reducing the lever arm) and then progressively straighten your leg as you get stronger”

-         Thats ok then, I shall go back to standing abduction then for a while!