I Had a Dream...

The other night I dreamed that I was speedskating, and as I was crossover-ing my way around a corner, it occurred to me--"hey, this doesn't hurt at all."  Later that night, I dreamed that I met President Obama and he complimented me on my arm muscles.  Sadly, at the rate my leg recovery is going I think it's more likely that I'll hear the President directing a "nice guns" my way than that I'll skate pain-free any time soon. Or do CrossFit pain free.  Or sit or drive or...well, you get the idea.

Yeah, things aren't going so well.  My five-day Time Out From Exercise turned out to have no effect on my leg pain.  It did, unfortunately, have an effect on my waistline; when I can't exercise I get cranky and when I get cranky I want to eat.  Lots of pizza and ice cream was sacrificed last week on the altar of "I Need to Get Myself in a Better Mood Before I Kill Someone."

So Monday, after my five days in the recliner were completed and were proven to be a dismal failure, I turned to a couple of new options for improving recovery: electrocution and stabbing.


Or, well, technically, ARP Wave Therapy and Dry Needling.  Yes, both were very painful.  No, I didn't exactly plan to do both on the same day, it just sort of happened.

I had stumbled upon the ARP Wave Therapy at a CrossFit competition I was watching a couple weeks ago.  They offered a free consultation/trial treatment, so I figured what have I got to lose? So at 6 am Monday, I gave it a try.

ARP Wave Therapy uses electrical stimulation to improve healing and retrain the brain to send and receive impulses to/from injured muscles appropriately.  Or something like that.  For the therapy, they take an electrode (for the record, nothing good has ever come from a sentence that begins with the phrase "they take an electrode...").  Anyway, they take an electrode and move it all over the injured body part as they deliver electrical current through it.  Yes, it's painful. And what are they looking for?  Why, they're looking for the most painful spot. I was told they're looking for a "10 out of 10" pain spot, but since I'm pretty sure a 10 out of 10 would actually result in the patient either kicking the technician in the teeth and ripping the electrode off, or huddling on the floor in the fetal position sobbing and peeing on themselves, well, I can confidently state that we did not get to a "10" pain level on my leg.

The 7 or so that we hit was bad enough.

And then, after they've found the most painful spot, they stick the electrode there and proceed with a workout I like to call "The Devil's AMRAP." For those who don't speak CrossFit, an "AMRAP" workout is one in which you complete As Many Reps As Possible in a stated amount of time.  The Devil's AMRAP looks like this:  Attach electrode to most painful spot of injured body part.  Turn up electricity to "10" pain level (or as close as patient will let you get).  Perform a movement that typically causes pain in injured body part (in my case, I did 5 squats).  Pain from the electricity will theoretically drop with this exercise.  Crank up electricity to "10" again, and do 5 more squats.  Repeat for 7 minutes.

In my case, unfortunately, the pain level never really decreased, which indicated that either I didn't let them crank up the volts enough, we didn't find the right spot, or the therapy would be unlikely to work for me.  So the trial was disappointing as well as painful.  I haven't ruled out a repeat trial if things don't improve in the future, but in the meantime we've got to see how the stabbing dry needling performs.

I didn't intend to try dry needling the same day I tried the ARP Wave, but when I got to my Monday afternoon Physical Therapy session I, of course, whined extensively about how my leg pain has not decreased at all in the past two months or more, and about how frustrated I'm getting.  So the PT suggested we try dry needling.  Which is basically a more Western version of accupuncture.

So yeah, it involves needles.

Fortunately we only had time to needle two spots on my leg...and also fortunately, the needles were not nearly as painful as the electricity had been.  The combination of both, though, was enough to make the CrossFit workout that I did immediately after the PT appointment fairly interesting.

Not being content with trying two different treatment methods at pretty much the same time, I also tried therapeutic deep tissue massage a couple days later.  Unfortunately, none of the three treatments have yet produced much pain reduction.    So I'm not sure what to do next.  I think I'll ask the PT, when I see him again for more needles on Monday, if and at what point we start to wonder if something is actually wrong with how my leg is healing. Am I just a slow healer?  Should I go back to the surgeon and ask more questions?  Should I be concerned about this, or do I just need to be patient?

In the meantime, I'll keep hitting the upper body workouts hard in case I happen to bump into the President.