About to stop physical therapy- can anyone share their experience?
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I am posting in this particular forum because I have seen comments where people talk about physical therapy or VRT and how they are doing so I thought I might be able to get the most experience out of this forum compared to some of the others I am on.
I will try to make the background quick but even the abridged version has a lot of parts. I am 32, I started having symptoms at the beginning of December 2014. These included migraines, auras and most disturbingly, really strong dizzy spells that would hit at any time, getting up, laying down, standing, sitting, driving, in the dark, in the light, etc.
I also have fibromyalgia so when these occurances seemed like isolated instances in the first several weeks I thought I had developed another symptom since there are so many with fibro but by the week of Christmas these occurances were daily. The auras would last 40 minutes to 2 hours, the dizzy spells would hit multiple times an hour and last anywhere from a few seconds to 4 straight minutes, the migraines became an every waking moment kind of thing and that was a lot of moments since I would wake up after 2 hours with such powerful migraines I couldn't go back to sleep.
This continued every single day until mid September when I finally got a diagnosis (after more than 10 different tests and 6 doctors/specialists). In a nutshell it was my neck. I lost 40 degrees of curvature straightening out my neck to where my C1 was tangling with my brain stem and putting pressure on my cerebellum. It was also 5 degrees to the left and showing signs of arthritis (the beginnings, not full blown).
After much consultation and a slow start to try out the therapies, by the first of October I was doing a combination of chiropractic adjustment, massage therapy and physical therapy. Of course as many of you know it started out slow, extremely slow in fact because I was a more severe case than they initially thought during the consultations. By Christmas (more than a year after this started) we upped everything to massage therapy twice a week, chiropractic adjustment twice a week and physical therapy twice a week. That has been going on since the week of Christmas so approximately 12 weeks straight of this particular schedule.
After about 9 weeks, the first week of December, I started to notice some improvement though the type of improvement would vary. I then realized I hadn't had any auras since November. By the second week of January I felt there was real tangible progress and continue to feel that way. I still have migraines and dizzy spells but instead of constantly throughout the day it's usually one or two of each and sometimes I go up to 2 days without any. However, I have set backs where we had to adjust back the physical therapy etc and the symptoms got worse at that time and also now, it's been raining all week so my migraines have been more frequent and severe because I am still succeptible to my triggers.
In any case, the point of this message is to ask those who completed their PT or VRT how long they went without experiencing symptoms. How long before they came back- how frequent or severe were they compared to before you started and stopped therapy? I would just like to hear different people's experiences so I can get an idea of how big the spectrum is and what I'm in for.
My insurance doesn't run out on the medical massage but it will run out after my 2 appointments next week on both the chiropractic adjustment and physical therapy. This is something I knew would eventually happen but now that it's looming I am not ready to stop because I was hoping to be a little better than I am (for the record I am WAYYYYY better than I was before) before stopping the physical therapy and adjustments. I am purchasing the cervical band so I can do some form of the therapy at home along with the stretches but I won't have access to the other equipment so I'm hoping it will still help. As I said, I will continue medical massage and right now the chiropractors staff is running some numbers to see what they would be charging me if I continued to come in. They are concerned about a relapse if I stop too soon so there is a chance I may continue to go but I won't know until next week and chances are high that I will go from twice a week to twice a month so I don't necessarily want that taken into account when you give me your experiences.
I have been so focused on trying to stay positive during this 15 month ordeal that I hadn't put enough thought into what was going to happen afterwards. I have a very big fear that this will continue for the rest of my life without getting enough relief to say that I have gone 2 weeks without a dizzy spell. It had a very big effect on my life, I haven't driven on the highway in 13 months, I haven't done yoga, all these things I can't do the same because it either makes me dizzy or it's too dangerous to do if I get dizzy. I know from comments that there are people out there who completed their PT and VRT and have had useful things to tell others on this forum so I would really like to hear about life afterwards and if you have had relapses and what the severity has been in comparison to before you found out what was wrong with you.
I'm sorry this is rambly and not very concise but I only just now decided to ask for help and wasn't entirely sure how to phrase what I'm asking for. Thanks in advance for any info you can give me!
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mja1233 manda08392
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manda08392 mja1233
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mja1233 manda08392
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manda08392 mja1233
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The issues currently is that my insurance is running out on this particular benefit next week and I'm wondering how people who stopped physical therapy fared afterwards.
I imagine that most people who stopped physical therapy and VRT actually completed it instead of running out of insurance but I'm thinking it's still valid and useful info to collect.
mja1233 manda08392
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