We had an appointment with Brian Miller for PT today and discussed several concerns that I have right now.
- Bridgett's neck pain has been at 5-6 the past several days and nothing seems to help. We do have the acupuncture appointment on Thursday, but many every day activities are affected--getting her shirt on and off, helping unload the dishwasher, etc.
- Bridgett's high resting heart rate. Once again her resting heart rate is high. On Friday it was 123. It is regularly between 106-112. We had discussed previously that perhaps as she works out more it will drop and it did seem to come down for a bit, but it is up high again. I indicated that I had called Bigfork Family Practice and set up an appointment for them to see her and he agreed that he would do the same in this situation. BTW the neurologist's office recommended Michelle Helwig at Bigfork Family Practice as she used to work with them.
- A couple of the things that they want her to do on her protocol from UT is to creep and crawl. These things hurt her neck too much and she can't do them. Brian said that the strengthening exercises that he is having her do right now will address these concerns.
- UT wants me to get a video of her jogging/running. Brian said that he will do that in a couple of appointments when he has addressed her neck pain.
Because of the neck pain Brian only worked on balance with Bridgett and then started right in on neck massage. It was cute because Bridgett told him he was so good at his job and did the best massage ever. Then she said I'm sure all of your patients tell you that to which he said actually no they don't. No one ever tells me good things like you do, so thank you! After massaging Bridgett's neck, Brian indicated that she had several trigger points, or muscle knots, in her neck. He said she should indeed be in pain. Brian said he could do what is called dry needling, which is different than acupuncture and very effective for trigger point pain. Acupuncture is superficial, whereas dry needling is right into the trigger point. This can be tricky if you don't know what you are doing, but I have confidence in Brian. He has had hundreds of hours of training in this technique. I agreed to the therapy and so Brian began the process. He was able to address several trigger points. Bridgett was great and just laid very still and relaxed while Brian did the treatment. He said she was the perfect patient! He told Bridgett that he is unable to talk to his family about patients and use their name, for confidentiality purposes, but that he mentions her to his family because of her great positive and happy attitude all of the time. Again as we left Bridgett said he's the nicest man ever! When we got outside I sang (thinking of the Will Smith rap song) he a nice guy...and Bridgett immediately started off on the rap song and did the entire thing, singing (rapping) the words just as fast as he does. When we got in the car I had one of his CD's and I played a couple of songs and I was amazed at how she knew every word and was just as fast an animated as ever!
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