NHS physio, My story and yours!

Sorry for another pointless thread, but just want to know you experience with the NHS physio, coz I am not happy and after speaking to a couple of friends, I am thinking of having a word with someone at the hopsital. I am gonna see Michael hopefully next week, so it probably won't matter, but still, it's not the point, the point is I have paid my taxes and expect a little better. And they have wasted enough of my time to finally let me down. I could have gone private had I known they are actually a complete waste of time.

I have torn my ACL on 24 Dec last year and after all those fiddling X Y and Z, I finally got to see a physio 3 weeks ago, my treatment was meant to be extensive, but I have seen her twice, all she has done is to do the same exams, ask the same questions and show me more and more exercises to do at home without ensuring I can and will do all of those correctly. I am due to see her again in 2 weeks time which I probably won't be bother to turn up coz it's a complete waste of time. Once every 2 weeks to be told to do more moves I can easily find on google is not proper nor extensive physio to my standard. Is it just my physio or has the NHS actually gotten that cheap and bad? By the way, she is gonna want to refer me back to the ortho docs for surgery as soon as from my impression. Do they actually get paid more if they cut more people open?

Sorry for the moaning but I am getting more more angry everyday.

Theres a limited amount that physio's can do for you with ligament tears in your knee. If you keep using it, sensibly increasing what activities you do. After around a year you'll probably become comfortable without that acl in your knee. The physio can only offer you suggestions on how to challenge your body to adapt to cope. The popular exercises seem to be very light stuff like leg extensions with ankle weights/bands and eventually by the time you are mostly recovered. Hopping about on one leg.

I found it all to be of limited value. Time + gradual increase in demands will help you get used to your injury (acl dont grow back!) some things might accellerate the process, but none of the things physio's suggested did it for me.

I had an acl & meniscus tear in march 2009, got MRI scan in june 2009. In between that time my leg was fucked, was swollen and immobile but as I had no help I went around beginning activities when I was able beginning with cycling. It was months before walking became tolerable. I started to do strength exercises and made huge progress by the time I got the scan & results. When they told me they found nothing wrong!

But my knee had blatantly made a gunshot sound when the injury occured, I still had knee pain and loud clicking. I got referred to various physio's all of whom suggested exercises far more basic to what I was doing. They had no information to offer me about what had gone wrong. Was very frustrating so I just got on with my own thing, knowing that something was torn. I got heavily into lifting weights, which strengthened my leg and helped to rehab the knee.

By the end of 2010, I got to the stage where the knee barely caused me any problems. Can walk fine. But if I run I get some knee pain and spasming/tendonitis in my hamstring. But other than that I can cope just fine and im happy to leave it.

I finally got a 2nd opinion again around nov 2010 and a much better doc, told me I had a torn ACL & Meniscii. He offerred to arrange acl reconstruction with hamstring graft, but I declined. As I am heavily into weightlifting now, and I need a strong relaible hamstring. I can cope with not being able to run.

Oh,

I should mention that I did eventually get to see a GOOD nhs physio, she specialised in working with athletes and tried to get me doing hopping and that sort of thing to increase my proprioception that I lost with my ACL. Theory was all good and well, but in reality it didnt work. My knee lacks the stability offerred by the acl, so my hamstring goes into overdrive, spasming to stabilise my knee. Im left with chronic/lingering extreme soreness and tightness if I run, let alone do hops on my leg. It was more than my leg/knee could deal with.

The problem is, that these sorts of joint/ligament issues are surgical matters. No amount of rubber band exercises will make your ligaments grow back, excess cartilage in the shoulders that causes the very common subluxation syndrome reduce/tighten, bone spurs to dissapear etc.. The only non surgical things that can help a little (over a long time) is heavy strength work. Things a NHS physio would not have access to/be allowed to do with you.

In a nutshell Just wait and see if it gets good enough to cope with, otherwise get surgery.

Sorry to hear that, DFP, I must admit that my treatment has been a little better than yours, only waited a month for the MRI, and physio referral only took a week.

Do you know what? All I really want is to be able to get back on my bike so I can kiss goodbye to the sodding bus, it's driving me nuts. I don't care for now if I can't do proper cycliing (was gonna do more long distance and start playing polo, decision was made around a week before the injury... :-( ). I just want to be able to commute, the longest I need is about 5 miles each time. I don't mind being a bit slow, anything is faster than the bus.

I really regret having listened to the docs advice, which was not to put weight and keep a knee brace on for unitl the had the MRI report, which was about 6 weeks. It fucking weaking my leg through and through. And when they found out I was actually doing it what I was told (I was seen by a different doc that time), they told me off as if it's all my fault that I kept the brace on.

But I guess what's happened has happened, a very hard lesson to be had.

Just get up and start using your leg as best you can, bit by bit doing harder stuff.

I was back on the bike after about 4 weeks (when the swelling had gone down). If you can only ride round the block, just do that. Consider sticking a freewheel on (I actually rode fixed then).

Your acl helps hold your knee joint sercurely together and gives your feedback about knee position etc. Injury affects running around/jumping on your leg. Cycling is one of the most easy things that you can do with such an injury. There is no stability element or horizontal/lateral strains. The ROM is quite small and stress/forces are low.

You should be abck on a bike in no time.

Glad you finally got to see a good one, I take it you are now back to pretty normal then?

I have my doubt with the surgery, it sounds really complicated and don't fancy using anything from my own body for the reconstruction. I think there should be a law to make the person / people who casue the injury to have their tendons / hamstring graft for the injuried person. It's only fair, like in the old days, if you kill someone, you die. 1 life for 1 life = 1 ligament for 1 ligament. What do you think?

Oops, I think we are posing at the same time. I think I will try to get back on my bike in the next couple of days.

If your main aim is to do cycling, acl isnt even important. If you wanted to play football or tennis that would be another matter.

i work at a hospital, and I used to play football with a group of randoms from the hospital.
One wednesday evening, whilst playing football, a rather heavy tackle sent someone flying, and then screaming in agony.
within 3 seconds he had 2 FY1s, an FY2, a physio and a registrar tending to his injuries.
i was only a witness to this, but its my only experience of NHS physios.

Over the past 15 years of bodily abuse every experience with an NHS physio has been less then good.

Information is scant at best, ask questions at your peril as there simply isn't time for a answer. Any treatment was simply based on symptom relief, not working out why the symptoms persisted.

To counter this:

I've had pretty shoddy results ( I don't mean results as in getting healthy again, more the process to manage your condition) with virtually all of the private physios I've stumped up the cash for, but the difference being you simply go elsewhere and hope the next is better.

A colleague of mine is receiving absolutely amazing physio' treatment from an NHS centre in Battersea. He too has only had poor experiences before.

It really is luck of the draw.

I've had two experiences with NHS physios--one was very bad and one was very good.

I think I might go buy a lottery ticket tomorrow.