May 11th, 2009

 

Daily Activities:

            Today on my first day of the second week of Senior Project I began the day with creating our weekly schedule and a recap on last week. We met at 8:30 this morning and we started off the day with a patient who we met before. The previous week he came in with his wife, who were both complaining of neck pain. Diane started off by stretching his neck as Stephanie and I observed. Diane then laid down the patient and firmly gripped the back of his head. She began to do what PTs call traction, and Diane stretched out the Cervical area and his Trap muscles, because Diane believed that the Traps were stronger than the Cervical area, which pulled and tightened the rest of the neck. Diane even let us do some of the traction, so that we would know where to pull and how to loosen up a stiff neck. After those exercises Diane put him on the stimulation machine.

            Our next patient who came in was an 81-year-old man who was coming in for the first time. Diane did a quick evaluation, after he told us that he had some pain in his right hip. From the evaluation Diane found that his IT band was extremely tight, and that’s what created the pain in the hip. Next Diane put him on stimulation and prepared for the next patient.

            Our third patient of the day was a woman who was hit by a truck about 20 years ago. She was experiencing pain in her neck, which created pain in her shoulder. Through the evaluation Diane found that the woman was in too much pain, and Diane decided not to do any of the strength test or exercises, so that she would not irritate the shoulder anymore. Instead Diane put stimulation on the neck near the C6 vertebra, which is at the top of the neck, and on her shoulder.

            I think that today was a good beginning and step for our next study joint, the shoulder joint.