Seven Months by Lin Grahame

Its now seven months since that traumatic fall and just last week I got down onto my floor mat without the aid of a chair! I have not been able to do this again! This is the way arthritis, every day can be different.

A different degree of stiffness. Warm sunny weather is great. All joints feel so much freer and my whole body feels at ease. Not getting down to the floor is perhaps not all due to arthritis however because my right hip still does not flex much past ninety degrees and then there is pain in my groin.

I continue to do the exercises I was given by physiotherapist Bill Taylor to coax the hip ball to drop and rotate towards the back of the socket more. He thinks lack of this rotation is what is causing the difficulty. A lack of internal rotation is causing me to walk with the waddle from side to side. This could also be caused by an abductor weakness. Strengthening those muscles is now a goal also.

Finding ways to do plank and press ups is also useful because my right wrist doesn’t flex enough. I plank on elbows and use a fist to press up on.

Goodness this sounds like a catalogue of problems and it sometimes feels like that. BUT we are in this global Covid 19 pandemic with social restrictions and people working from home. First wave was at its peak when I was still totally engrossed in just getting out of bed in the morning!

I went home from hospital just before that peak and have been my own physiotherapist mostly ever since. My regimen and exercises I intend to put on video soon in order to help others who have arthritis or other conditions or accidents which have caused or are causing joint restrictions and movement restrictions.

The world is now facing what is more than likely a second wave of the virus and I am much more aware of it all and its impact on all of our lives.