Update on S's Knee Rebab
She's making progress!
It’s been ~7 weeks since S injured her knee. She’s now done three weeks of physical therapy (going 3x a week). The first two weeks were all about continuing to drain the fluid from her knee, as it was still inflamed. So she’d get hooked up to various machines that worked with her lymphatic system and then she’d get these colorful KT tape treatments (that she named Henry) to further support the drainage process in between sessions.
She still has a bit of inflammation but she’s back to walking faster than me, even with a small limp and a right thigh that is 3cm smaller than the left due to muscle atrophy. She has begun strength work in her sessions and I know it’s been humbling for her to have to rebuild what’s been lost. It’s going to continue to take time, but she was recently cleared to stop wearing her knee brace. Progress! (She ditched the crutches weeks ago; they were miserable.)
Her PT has been great. He’s half-Albanian, half-Italian and he’s in med school (on top of already being a physiotherapist), so he works in and around his classes. It actually works out great for us because we’re able to go in the evening and on Saturdays, so S doesn’t miss any school. He’ll head to Rome in the summer/fall to start his residency, and we’ve been having interesting discussions about what medical care looks like in different countries.
His office is basic compared to the setup we experienced in the US, where PT practices are often filled with lots of equipment and machines and even teams of physical therapists and their assistants. But the exercises he’s having S do (e.g., using a balance board, doing wall sits with a yoga ball, and doing various leg lifts with a resistance band) are effective. It’s a reminder that good care can be provided without bells and whistles.
Importantly, he’s compassionate and caring. We enjoy spending an hour at a time with him. We ask lots of questions, sometimes about S’s recovery, sometimes about medicine in general, and sometimes about cultural things (in Albania and Italy). He even gave us recommendations for a few places to go when we head to Florence.
This experience has reminded me that part of recovery isn’t just about medical treatment, it’s also about human care and connection. It’s about sharing the experience you’re going through with someone else and entrusting them to help you move forward with a human touch. (In this case, quite literally!)
If you’re curious, each PT session is 3000 lek (€30). I recognize that while this sounds quite affordable to us, it is still proportionately expensive for a family earning local wages. We may or may not eventually submit the accumulated expense to our travel insurance for possible reimbursement. (For comparison, many of my PT sessions in the US were $75 and that was after insurance paid ~50% of them, though I was at least able to use HSA funds to cover the out-of-pocket portion.)
If you’ve received care of any kind outside of your home country, what has your experience been like and what stands out to you?