The end of the third week finished well. On Thursday I got to go into surgery! It was such a great experience!! I saw 2 procedures – a knee arthroscopy and a lateral release. The surgeon was very friendly and explained everything to me. As the images came up on the screen he explained what everything was and went through the anatomy. I found it really interesting to see this – it was very different from seeing it on cadavers. I had to change into scrubs and wear a hairnet and facemask. There were quite a few people in the operating room but they didn’t seem to mind that I was there too. It was such a great opportunity to see surgery and I’m hoping that sometime in the next two weeks I will get to go in again and see a different procedure.
A guy came in on Thursday and did a little presentation on braces and orthoses etc, that the physio staff may be interested in buying. He bought a heap with him and let us have a fiddle with them. He explained how most of them worked and what they were best used for. It was really interesting. The only problem was some were very expensive and some clients might not be able to afford them. On Friday we had a guy come and talk to us about a machine that assists with coughing. I didn’t understand fully how it worked but it used positive and negative pressure and helped with coughing. It’s been great how we have been able to see these little presentations, the braces and machines we have seen have been really interesting.
We are still getting new clients, so it is unlikely we will be able to discharge them all before we finish the placement. We will aim to do this but we may have to hand some over to the other physios. We are starting to see more clients each day so have been busier than when we started. I much prefer this, even if it means we don’t have as much time to prepare before seeing a client.
We had a client come back on Thursday (it was her second visit). She had damaged her Achilles and has now been out of plaster for a few weeks. She is going very well, which was good to see. There is the added problem that both her legs are very swollen. We didn’t really address this last time (apart from giving her tubigrip and advising her to elevate it) so I was keen to do more about it this time. I did some DTF on her Achilles before Matt and I did effleurage to both her legs. I felt this was very effective, but not a permanent solution in this case. We only did it to the calf muscles and around the heels, but next time I’d like to do it to the front of her legs and tops of her feet as well (as there was quite a lot of swelling in her feet). I felt like I did the massage well (I have plenty of experience after my 4P hours!) I have never really done effleurage on someone who has some much swelling before, it has generally been massage on athletes. It was amazing how much difference it made, I could feel the fluid moving under the skin. While I was doing the DTF if I lifted my fingers off there were indents of where they were on the skin. This gives an idea of how much fluid was in there! I think massage in the future will definitely be a good option to help with the swelling, as long as she is still doing her part with wearing the tubigrip and elevating the leg. She is starting to do some active movements (like cycling and calf raises) which will also help pump the swelling. She comes in for an exercise class (sometimes twice a week) as she has COPD, which will also be beneficial. I just feel there is so much more we can do for her. Her Achilles is healing well and we were able to progress the exercises. The hands-on massage experience with someone with so much swelling was a good experience.
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