The patient can go on vacation, but the therapy can’t.

I’ve recently returned from a 2-1/2 week vacation to Singapore and Thailand. It was the trip of a lifetime. But frankly, I’m exhausted.

Even when you intentionally “get away from it all” you don’t get away from it ALL.

My wife, Caroline, and I have been looking forward to this trip for some months as planning had actually begun during the summer of 2022. And here’s a fun fact: planning your vacation in advance can actually be good for your health. (Don’t believe me, fine. But don’t disagree with the folks at National Geographic … that’s bad karma.)

We took the time to confirm the details of our trip with our second-oldest son and his wife when I visited them in Almaty, Kazakhstan this last September. You see, Tim teaches third graders at an English-language school there and our trip coincided with his school’s spring break.

Vacation bonus: Tim and his family (including our two little grandsons) were able to join us in Thailand the second week of our trip.

The best laid plans … youch!

Then I had my little accident in October. But Caroline and I were not about to let a shattered scapula and broken ribs derail our vacation plans. In fact, Caroline asked my orthopedist (ORA Orthopedic’s Dr. Myles Luszczyk) if I’d still be able to go on our trip in March. He said that if I was serious about my therapy and recovery, he didn’t see why not.

Sometimes making the intra-airport transition from one gate to another can be a little hard on the shoulder.

Caroline assured him I would be.

Even after several months of therapy, I still had some concerns about the amount of time I would be spending on airplanes and in airports during our travel to and home from Asia. International travel can be a real drag and toting baggage from plane to bus to cab can be physically stressful, even for the non-injured.

Of course, I was careful to discuss those concerns with my “team” including my general practice physician, my main contact at ORA (John Tryon, PA), and my therapist, Kathryn Ellsworth.

Together, we came up with a strategy for managing my shoulder injury, plans for recovery, and any other health-related issues to take into consideration considering the distance and change in environment.

A successful trip abroad depends on planning.

Over the years, I’ve found that tourists and travel planners usually fall into one of two categories: there are those who like to take their time and really investigate a destination, and then there are those who want to go-go-go from location to location in order to make sure nothing gets missed. I am definitely the former. My wife is definitely the latter. 

It makes for an interesting “travel dynamic.”

To accommodate our different “styles” I’ve decided to share some of the things I learned about the places we visited on our trip in a new, “destination investigation“ section of my blog. If you’re thinking of going to Singapore or Thailand, at some point in the future, you might want to check it out. Look for those posts starting in May.

We wound up making a compromise: We’d go-go-go the first ten days of vacation. That included getting up early, eating on the run, going on lots of guided tours, and taking lots (and lots) of pictures. But once we reached the sandy beaches of Phuket, Thailand, where we would be joined by Tim, Sarah, Oliver and Elliott, we’d slow down the pace a bit.

That sounded like a winning deal to me and Caroline agreed.

But I had other plans to make … with a little help from my therapist

Before we left for Asia, I had to make sure I spent some time planning out my PT routine for the three weeks I’d be out of town. The last thing I wanted to do was backslide on my progress.

Kathryn Ellsworth, ORA Physical Therapy

So I met with my physical therapist from ORA Physical Therapy, Kathryn Ellsworth. Her background in PT and time spent in the workplace as a therapist gave her some great experience to draw from as she worked out a realistic and achievable PT program I could maintain on the road.

Of course, I had to break the bad news to her that she would not be able to join us on our trip, but she got over it. Instead, she walked right over to the weight machines and wheeled out a device that contained reels of rubber bands and tubes.

Her recommended PT program was pretty straightforward. Kathryn was able to focus my therapy-on-the-go around building strength in my shoulder and injured joint. The strategy developed jointly between the surgical/medical team and my therapist was pretty straight-forward: try to build strength in the joint and see if we could stabilize the injured shoulder so surgery wouldn’t be needed.

I needed an exercise routine I could travel with me and equipment that would fit inside my suitcase and not exceed the limitations from Airlines. So that meant traveling with ORA’s weight machines was out.

It’s okay, I was with the bands …

My bands of many colors

The solution to my exercise dilemma came in the form of rubber bands. Kathryn was quick to provide me with, a virtual rainbow of exercise equipment. Each band was a different color which indicated the relative resistance of each band.

She also gave me five exercises to do using the resistance bands which were designed to help build up strength in my shoulder over time.

Kathryn also reminded me that I needed to do plenty of walking. I assured her that my go-go-go travel partner would make sure “getting steps in” wouldn’t be a problem. And there was no way I was going to tell Caroline she needed to make sure we did plenty of walking or, you know, I’d be walking back from Thailand right now.

I offered that I planned on doing lots of swimming – either in the pools at our hotels or on the beach. I figured that would be easy, since one full week was going to be spent in Phuket.

Some days were better than others, but all days were interesting,

Caroline and I made a new friend at the elephant sanctuary in Phuket. I’m the one in the blue shirt.

I’d be lying if I said every day was a physical therapy success while I was on vacation. In fact there were a few days where I did very little PT, but Caroline did not disappoint by putting me through the paces. That included everything from mountain hikes to see the natural wonders of Thailand, a day-long trek through The Golden Triangle (the conjunction of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand), an elephant sanctuary, and an oddly-named tourist destination known as “monkey mountain.“

According to my iPhone, we walked over 200,000 steps during our vacation (in excess of 10,000 steps a day).

Time spent in the pool started off as a chance to relax and cool down after a solid day of walking and eventually led to swimming laps and giving my shoulder a really good workout. On Day One, I was barely able to get my arm over my head and swim a full stroke, but by the end of the vacation, my shoulder strength had improved to the point of being able to do labs of both breaststroke and front crawl.

I was pretty pleased with myself, but I knew I still had a long way to go to get back to full use of my arm and shoulder.

The voyage home and getting back on the trail.

The trip back was grueling. Our original return flight (through London) was cancelled and we had to re-route through Doha, Qatar. The trip back took nearly 36 hours straight and my first PT appointment was scheduled for the next morning at 6:15 am.

Or so I thought.

When I arrived at the clinic for my appointment, I checked my text messages to see a note from Kathryn sent the night before informing me that she was under the weather had to cancel our appointment. I wasn’t really inconvenienced since I was still jet lagged and my body clock thought it was about one in the afternoon.

To be honest, I’m not sure how productive I would have been at that first appointment, anyway.

In fact, by the end of the week, I was the one who was sick (from exhaustion and too much airport time, I suppose), and had to cancel my physical therapy appointment.  I finally made it back to the Northwest Davenport Clinic and climbed back into the PT routine the following week.

That week I also had an appointment with a new doctor at ORA Orthopedics, Dr. Andrew Bries, who took a closer look at my shoulder’s mobility and gave me a diagnosis I was not expecting.

But that’s a story for another blog.

I hope you’ll stay with me on this trail to recovery as we go to new places and on new adventures.