How Physiotherapy Helped Me After Multiple Seizures Due to Epilepsy

Since the end of March 2021, I have been going to a physiotherapist to work on my shoulder, which was injured from a seizure in January 2020 (and re-injured in February, March, and April 2020). As I type this, I am officially graduated from physio, and my shoulder is close enough to 100%. At the very least, I no longer have range of motion issues that prompted the physio sessions in the first place. I wish I had started physio in 2020 — but we have a COVID pandemic to thank for that.

Physiotherapy is not an often talked about part to Epilepsy. I searched reddit.com/r/epilepsy for posts about “physiotherapy” or “physio”, and I only found 5 — and only one of those was similarly related to the person’s shoulder.

And I don’t know why that is. There are many forms of epilepsy, but those like me that experience tonic-clonic seizures know they can be particularly violent. My body flexes and releases almost every muscle. I’m lucky to only have an injured shoulder out of all of it (and sometimes a bruised tongue from biting down on it). After my first seizure it was my back that was in excruciating pain for days — but after that, just my shoulder.

I’m confused about why I don’t see the topic come up in the different communities I follow. So, I hope that by relating my experiences I can add to the conversation.

My shoulder was initially injured from a seizure in January 2020 — at least it was first noticeably injured. My range of motion in my left shoulder was seriously limited, it was weakened, it was sore, and I suddenly couldn’t do everyday things with that shoulder.

For example, I couldn’t reach my arm up without pain, and often it would “snap back” — like my arm reached its stretch limit and pulled back to avoid breaking. Even as my shoulder “got better” (read: not sore all the time, but still with limited range of motion) I had to make weird contortions to be able to raise my arm without pain or “snap back”.

I started looking into physio in February 2020, but I procrastinated, and everything shut down due to COVID in March. So I went along all Spring, Summer, and Fall hoping my shoulder would heal on its own.

In a way, it did, but I knew it wasn’t all the way there. So, at the end of March 2021, I went through my health benefits provider and found a physiotherapist near where I live and work.

In the first visit I explained everything: the seizures that started everything; what I could and could not do; and what I wanted to do. The physiotherapist performed an overall assessment, which included having me try various arm movements. It didn’t take very long but she very quickly figured out that I had a lot of scar tissue built up and started me on a plan to begin the healing process.

I started out with three sessions a week, eventually moving down to twice a week, and then by the time of my last appointment, a month between sessions.

The sessions were only an hour long, and for me involved deep tissue massage, ultrasound therapy, TENS (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), and acupuncture. It sounds like a lot, but it all went by quickly. In my last two appointments we were able to skip both the ultrasound and acupuncture because my shoulder had progressed so much.

The hardest part of the sessions was by far the deep tissue massage. This hurt a lot at first, to the point that one day I left feeling like I needed to throw up from the pain. The purpose of this was to break up the scar tissue. I was promised that as I went through physio, there would be less scar tissue, and it would be less painful.

Well, week by week, this was true, even after I was set back by a breakthrough seizure in April that resulted in a minor injury to my other shoulder. My shoulders bounced back much faster than if I had gone without physio. As I continued with physio, I could tell the difference — and now there is no pain.

The other hard part are the stretches and exercises I had to do outside of the physio sessions. Not hard because they’re difficult to do (with some exceptions — my most recent homework was physically difficult at first), but because I need to find time to fit them in the day and week.

But I’ve gotten into a reliable routine with the exercises, though that’s partly helped by working from home. We’ll see what happens when/if I return to the office. And even though I no longer need physio sessions, I will still be doing the stretches; but maybe not as often as I was before.

Physio became important to me in just 5 months. And now I’m at the end of it, I need to adjust to it not being a part of my routine. I also think that it’s been a very important piece to how I’m dealing with epilepsy overall. Would I be in the same place mentally if I hadn’t gone through physio?

Maybe, but I would be dealing with limited abilities due to an injured shoulder. If there is one thing I would recommend for someone else dealing with physical side effects as a result of seizures, it’s to look into physiotherapy. It’s made a world of difference for me in terms of getting back to my “normal” self.