Physical therapy after an injury, surgery, or both is essential to heal properly and get back to living your best life. Here are some tips and recommendations that you can use to help you be successful in physical therapy and get back to a healthy life.

Understand Your Injury Timeline

At your initial physical therapy appointment and evaluation, your therapist is going to evaluate your current condition and get a good understanding of how you got to that point. They are going to want to get a detailed history of your injury and when you acquired it. So, for this reason, it is important that you keep a good knowledge of the timeline through your injury and any surgeries that took place. If you can remember the dates of your injury and when it became more severe, it will help your physical therapist understand the injury and tailor the therapy sessions to correct the problem and target the initial issue. 

You may need to make a written record of your medical history and the injury timeline so that you don't forget details. Key elements, such as what month you started feeling a tingling numbness or when the small pain turned into a more serious pain where you couldn't walk, are going to be important for your physical therapist to know.

Learn Prevention

In addition to healing your body through physical therapy, it is also a great idea to learn how to avoid getting the same injury in the future. Your injury that leads to physical therapy may have come from a habit where you perform a movement wrong or incorrectly overtime, leading to pain and damage to your body. 

Talk to your physical therapist during your therapy sessions to learn about what you may have done to cause the injury. They can advise and train you on new practices to use in which you will avoid reinjuring yourself again. This is essential, especially if you play a sport and plan to return to the same types of activity again and don't want to end up back in the hospital.

Use the Sessions Wisely

It is also important that you attend each of your scheduled physical therapy sessions. It may be tempting to skip if you are feeling better or if you are in pain, but don't do so. The physical training you will receive at each session is going to help you heal more quickly, and if you are experiencing pain, let your physical therapist know. They need to know any changes in your body so they can better adjust your physical therapy sessions. They know exactly how to work your body to help it heal and gain strength. A place like Dominion Physical Therapy would be a good place to start for more information.

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