B A C K G R O U N D
To start off the first day of December, Mrs. Elizabeth Boone came to visit our class along with one of her PT students, Rachel.
Mrs.Boone is a physical therapist and is there to evaluate and record a patient's progress.
T H E I N J U R Y T O E X A M I N E
To begin the class, we had to discuss the subjective; when and how did this happen?
On Monday, Mr. Connor Mosley was tackled mid play during a football game and ended up with an open tip/fib fracture to his left leg, around the shaft area, and a mild concussion. By the time the patient comes to see Mrs. Boone, it will be post-surgery and he will be working on walking normal with the pins and rods located in the healing wound. Mrs. Boone will have to be cautious of the injury and the range of motion they are now limited to and work on trying to extend it to a more normal range.
The session, between her and the patient, starts with the testing of both his right and leg knee in
order to compare them afterwards and then proceeds to test each ankle. While examining his knee and how it is bending, she notices it is only hitting about 95 degrees and not the normal of 130 degrees. She is also pulling and pushing against it in order to test its strength and resistance. She states it feels "shaky and unstable" and has a suspension of an ACL tear.
As she proceeds to access the leg, she begins measures around the patella, the mid thigh, mid calf, the ankle, mid foot, and the base of the metatarsals. We can make the observation from the stated measures that the mid thigh of the right leg has decreased in size because of the lack of muscle use post injury.
T R E A T M E N T
In order to help strengthen the muscles and help Connor regain normality in his leg.
To begin the treatment, Mrs. Boone brought out a muscle stimulation. This machine contracts your muscles by sending signals to your nerves without the brain doing it alone. This helps the nerves get used to moving like that again and gets them used to it. After this, the patient would be told to attempt to move their muscles the same way the machine just did.
While that is the easier treatment, she also goes through workouts like ankle pumps and straight leg raises to help re-grow the muscle and prevent blood clots.
Lastly to end our discussion with Mrs. Boone, she taught our class how to use crutches. The use of crutches helps prevent putting pressure on that hurt leg, but can sometimes cause more injuries than it prevents if not handled correctly.
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