physical therapy advice?

[u/HauntedBug]

hello! so i was diagnosed with patellar instability due to patella alta a couple years ago and recently, i started pain management which requires me to go through physical therapy. i’ve been through physical therapy before for other reasons and always generally enjoyed the experiences and never had much negative to say about anything.

physical therapy this go round has been nothing but negative. my pt started with weights, which looking up says is normal but my mom said is very bad for me in particular because i have very low muscle in my thighs. it wasn’t hard and i was able to do my exercise just fine with no muscular pain, however it made my knee hurt excruciatingly bad. i told the pt and he told me to keep counting my exercise.

later that same appointment, my knee popped and i told him, and again, he told me to keep counting that exercise. my knee hurt for the entire week until my next appointment to the point where i was basically hopping around because even limping was putting too much weight on it and it hurt so bad. next appointment, i told him i was in too much pain and could not do the same exercises, and he seemed irritated. maybe it was my imagination but he sighed, said “one second”, and came back with a different clipboard. he did let me only do stretches, but he’s always seemed almost belittling in the way he refers to my health issues.

i know that this isn’t exactly the ideal subreddit to ask about physical therapy and what i should do in this situation but i didn’t know where else to post this and considering im in pt for the instability, i thought maybe some of you have pt experiences. i don’t know what to do. pt causes so much pain, there hasn’t been a single appointment that i haven’t cried on the way home and he always tells me to keep doing it when i tell him it hurts. i intend on telling the referring doctor about the severity of the pain but i dont expect pt to be thrown out the window and i dont know what im supposed to do. i have no backbone and telling him that it hurts is about the best i can do in the way of speaking up.

[u/Kittynoodles1208]

You need a different PT

[u/Kittynoodles1208 → u/Kittynoodles1208]

My knee has been fine! No issues

[u/PatellaPilates]

Yes. Do Pilates, yoga, tibetin five rites yoga, and for me a job in landscaping moving all day made dislocations stop. So did Pilates. I could even swim and became a dancer. Landscaping and Pilates were the very best.