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| These were the good ol' days when Kellyn was much more compliant with her torticollis stretches. Amazing, how much can change within a few weeks time. |
Since Kellyn has right torticollis, her right side neck muscles are tight, short, and strong. Her left side neck muscles are longer and weaker than her right side. If she is actively resisting stretching her neck to her left side, then she is further strengthening her right side neck muscles. Exactly what we don't want to do! And the last thing I want to do is be wasting precious time worsening her condition, when I could be helping her. The PT said that it was OK to stretch Kellyn if she was not actively resisting the stretch. In this case, the stretching can be beneficial for her.
I shared this information with Ryan. He started wondering if stretching her head to her right side with her actively resisting the stretch would be beneficial for her. Another smart thought! Therefore, Ryan stretched her neck to her right side and of course Kellyn being the tenacious girl that she is actively attempted to fight the stretch. The crazy thing was that she barely had any strength in her left neck muscles to fight the strength. When you do that same stretch to her left side, she resists that stretch quite easily.
At our next outpatient physical therapy session, I asked the PT about the idea of stretching Kellyn's neck to her right (in hopes that she would resist) in order to build muscles strength on her left neck side. She said I could experiment with that and only stretch her that way if she does actively resist. If Kellyn is completely compliant with me stretching her neck to the right, then its obviously not building up strength in the left side of her neck like we want. Thus, it would not be worthwhile to do.
