Hello and welcome to the Knee Pain Guru, Knee Pain Questions Answered. This week I have a question from Peggy. She writes, she broke her left patella that was in two pieces and was put together on January 12th of this year. She has been doing PT at home and with the physical therapies as prescribed.
Today she saw her surgeon who wants to put me under general anesthesia for manual manipulation on March 5th, next week. My range of motion is approximately 50 to 60 degrees. X-rays taken today show the patella is good, the doctor said scar tissue needs to be broken through. She's done from a research and she needs help for the range of motion since she passed out this morning at the Physical Therapy Center while pressing on a stationary bike with stirrups over her feet. So, that is the general gist of her question. Thank you Peggy for your question.
What's really important to understand is when you have scar tissue, and there is manual manipulation required, there is two approaches to manual manipulation, one is direct and one is indirect. Direct is what I believe your doctor is suggesting, that is, you have scar tissue, and that scar tissue needs to be broken through. That is fine, and you're going to affect the change on the body. However, on some level, the body is going to resist that change. The body is going to tense up to protect itself, whether it's under anesthesia or not.
You'll see people that there is the documentation where a lot of it is tension that comes from our mind or from our emotions as a result of an injury, that physically, the body is fine. However, mentally and emotionally, there is a component holding on to the tension pattern, that causes the body to lock up.
So, if you put under general anesthesia, the adhesions can be broken, however you come back to, and the body tenses up again. So it's important to address these tension patterns on many different levels. The only way that I have seen to support the body, so it can let go of those tension patterns on many different levels, is instead of direct, there is indirect manipulation or supporting the joint where it's comfortable, or in this case, your patella, your kneecap.
So, what can be done is instead of breaking through those scar adhesions, you take those scar adhesions where they're comfortable, because essentially, what are the scar adhesions, it's connective tissue, or fascia that's adhered at the site of an injury. That's to keep the body from getting injured further.
So if we support the kneecap, you support your patella in a position of comfort, the body recognizes this comfort, the nervous system recognizes this comfort. It begins to unwind and let go of that tension it's holding onto. It's very simple and it can be taught very easily. I am in the process of working out some videos that is going to help you understand how to do this for yourself, that will allow you to get over the pain that you're experiencing in your patella.
So Peggy once again, thank you very much for your question, and if anyone has any questions, anyone else has any questions, or this didn't fully answer the question presented, you can go to TheKneePainGuru.com under the Contact section, and send me a question and we'll get it answered here on video. So thank you very much and I will be in touch soon. Bye, bye!
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