Aquatic action
Patients feeling the benefits of water therapy
Multiple sclerosis is slowly limiting Michelle MacDonald’s ability to get around – her balance is off, her legs are slowly losing strength, her arms don’t want to straighten.
The Musquodoboit woman tried tai chi and she tried going to the gym but gravity was always working against her.
“I wanted to exercise, every time I made some progress with treatment, it was like rewinding a video and I made some gains, but when I relapsed, I lost ground,” she said.
Her mother Esther MacDonald says they were running out of options.
“We called the pool about Aquafit out of desperation,” she said. “We had to find something.”
Michelle wasn’t physically able to take part in the group fitness classes, but she did find a water therapist named Georgena MacIsaac.
“She has been just wonderful,” says Esther. “She knows her stuff – I’m sure if it wasn’t for these sessions with Georgena, Michelle wouldn’t be mobile.”
They started twice-weekly sessions of water therapy lasting about a half-hour, first at the East Hants Swimming Pool, and now at the Rath Eastlink Community Centre.
MacIsaac says their first goal was to build up Michelle’s core strength.
“A little turbulence in the water would knock her right over, she didn’t have the strength to hold herself up,” says Georgena. “The good thing about the pool is, if she falls, she doesn’t get hurt.”
First Georgena focused on making Michelle comfortable in the water and then built up her core strength with water walking exercises, adding in float belts and pool noodles for variety.
“We use the properties of water, the buoyancy helps with balance, moving in water creates resistance, the pressure of the water acts like a compression sock circulating the blood
throughout the body,” says MacIsaac. “People don’t realize how much harder they are working until they go to get out.”
Michelle says getting dressed afterwards can be the hardest part of the sessions.
Georgena knows how hard it is – she herself lost the use of her legs in 2006 when she had an autoimmunity breakdown.
She too found herself at the East Hants pool, gained her strength back and studied for her certification as a post-rehabilitation specialist.
Georgena now works three days and two nights a week as a water therapist at the RECC.
She helps people living with ALS, Parkinson’s and people recovering from accidents; people with joint problems included those recovering from hip replacements.
“I’ve worked with people who had so much joint pain, they couldn’t move at all, they couldn’t do anything because of the pain, and coming here was the best time of their week, it made them feel so much better,” says Georgena.
Michelle and Georgena have been working together for five years and Michelle now has the strength and balance to join the gentle functioning water fitness group at the RECC.
Her favourite part of the exercise sessions is the stretching at the end when Georgena tows her around by her feet.
“Cause I don’t have to do anything,” says Michelle.
Management at the RECC says a second staff member is being trained as a post-rehabilitation specialist.
Anyone interested in water therapy could contact the RECC’s aquatic manager Laura Croft. Cover photo By Jonathan riley/ truro Daily news Michelle MacDonald, front, is keeping the effects of multiple sclerosis at bay through twice-weekly pool sessions at the Rath Eastlink Community Centre, with water therapist Georgena MacIsaac, left, and her mother, Esther MacDonald, right.