She walked with pain, a slight limp and expressed a keen interest in shedding some excess weight and re-vamping her lifestyle to a healthier one. Gourmet food lover, snowboarder, cyclist, swimmer and sometimes runner she had no idea what to expect when we discovered that she had a bone cyst inside the head of her femur that would derail her and leave her on crutches for quite sometime; forcing her to start again from scratch as she encountered months of painful and frustrating physiotherapy and injury rehab.
A 32 year old pediatric nurse by profession, she has a keen understanding of health and how to cultivate a healthy lifestyle so it was fantastic, and with much enthusiasm that I took on this wonderful client.
First off we started with the standard benchmarking of strength, endurance, flexibility, then focused on posture, gait, muscle imbalances, hyper-facilitation and inhibition. After concluding which muscles were working optimally, which weren’t and a game plan to move forward, we got started. In addition to the fitness component we also explored her nutrition and had her complete a metabolic typing test to determine how she should eat for her own unique chemistry/metabolism.
Admittedly, we were off to a flying start, she became more fit instantly and then started losing weight before we discovered this pain she was having in her hip area was due to a bone cyst in her femur that would ultimately need to be removed (thanks to Dr Tim at the Cleveland Clinic for the astute diagnosis and treatment) for my client to move forward and enjoy all of the activities that she currently integrated into her lifestyle.
We worked as hard as we could given the pain and reduced strength in her hip to get her super fit for her surgery. Surgery day arrived, she was fit and the operation was successful. Post-surgery we had lots of challenges re-strengthening the affected are where they had to cut through muscle and fascia to access the femur. Other new challenges also surfaced like posture, gait and balance. Having to use crutches for months, everything had changed and we had a completely new set of obstacles to correct and overcome.
Good news is that she has been snowboarding and biking since her surgery and even picked up rowing to stay extra active, further accommodating her recovery. She’s not yet 100% but we’re working on getting her there as soon as time will allow.
What I’m hoping to convey in this short chronicle is the importance of having a plan or goal, working the plan and allowing for setbacks as they are a normal part of any goal achieving progression. Even though my client has been faced with injury, a major surgery and having to re-train how she walks, she’s still working hard to achieve her initial goals and will have new ones to share with me in the very near future. I admire people like her and feel very fortunate to provide counsel and coaching that assists in their pursuit for optimal health.
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