For the recovery that stopped short
Stalled Recovery Review
Written by the Phoenix clinical leads.Clinically reviewed by Louise Yow, Principal Physiotherapist and Director, AHPC A1300363H.Last reviewed 28 September 2026.
Nobody can tell you what is recoverable from one appointment. Three weeks will tell you.
Three appointments, one a week for three weeks, with a Principal Hand Occupational Therapist or a senior physiotherapist. For a hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder, back, hip, knee, ankle or foot that healed but did not finish recovering. You end it knowing what is measurably lost, what actually moved when we worked on it, and what that means for the ceiling.
Three 45-minute appointments over three weeks. $690, nett, no GST. No referral needed.
The pattern
How a recovery stalls without anyone noticing
The operation went well. The fracture healed. The surgeon was satisfied and signed you off. Therapy either stopped when the pain did, or never started. Months later it works well enough that you have adapted around it, and not well enough that you have forgotten about it.
Nobody made a mistake. The pain went, which is what everyone was watching, and the part that was still unfinished was not being measured by anyone.
This review is for you if you recognize more than one of these.
Hand, wrist and elbow
- You cannot turn your palm fully up, and you notice it every time you carry a plate or take change
- Your grip gives out on jars, bags, a kettle, or a tool you used to handle without thinking
- A finger will not fully straighten or fully bend, months after it was supposed to
- The wrist aches at the end of a working day but is fine in the morning
- The elbow will not straighten fully after a cast or an operation
Shoulder, back, hip, knee, ankle and foot
- The knee bends well enough for stairs up, but not for stairs down, or not to sit on the floor
- You cannot reach behind your back on that side, months after the shoulder settled
- The ankle gives way on uneven ground, or you avoid uneven ground now
- You can walk fine and still cannot run, hop, or trust it to land
- One leg is visibly thinner than the other and nobody has measured the difference
- You have quietly stopped doing something: a sport, an instrument, push-ups, carrying your child on that side
And the one that brings most people here: someone told you this is as good as it gets, and nobody measured anything before saying so.
What the review is not
- Not a second opinion on your surgery. We do not assess whether the operation was the right one or well done. That is your surgeon’s territory and we refer you back if something needs their eyes.
- Not a promise. Late is harder. Some range does not come back, particularly after a complex fracture or a long period immobilised. You get an honest read, including when the honest read is that the gain available is small.
- Not a diagnosis from paperwork. Send your reports beforehand and we will tell you what they mean, but the assessment needs you in the room.
Why three weeks and not one long appointment
The question is what moves, and that takes time to answer
The obvious way to build this would be one long visit: measure everything, treat for an hour, send you away with a verdict. We do not do it that way, for two reasons.
A stalled joint does not tolerate a long visit. Tissue that has been stiff for months has a low ceiling for how much work it can take in one sitting. Push past it and you get swelling and soreness that set things back rather than forward, and you learn nothing useful from the response, because the response is just irritation.
More importantly, the thing you want to know cannot be measured on day one. A stiff joint measured once is a number. The same joint measured again after a week of the right work is an answer. Range that shifts tells you the restriction is soft tissue and still negotiable. Range that does not move after two weeks of honest work tells you something structural is holding it, and that the ceiling is lower than either of us hoped.
That is the whole point of this review. Three appointments across three weeks is the shortest honest way to find out.
The three weeks
What actually happens
Week 1: the history and the baseline
What happened, what was done, what therapy you had and what you responded to, and what you have stopped doing because of it. The last one usually tells us the most, because people rarely volunteer it.
Then measurement against the other side: range at each joint with a goniometer, strength on a calibrated gauge, grip and pinch in kilograms for a hand, scar mobility, swelling, and sensation or balance where they are relevant. Written down, because everything after this is judged against it. Treatment starts in the same appointment, at a load the tissue can take.
Week 2: what moved
The same measurements, taken the same way. This is the diagnostic week. What changed after seven days of the right work, and what did not, separates a stiff joint from a tight scar from a tendon that is not gliding from a muscle that was never reloaded. They look identical from the outside and need completely different treatment.
Your home program is adjusted to whatever the numbers showed.
Week 3: the read, and the plan
Measurements again, now with a trend rather than a single point. You get the stage diagnosis against the Phoenix Recovery Protocol, what would have to be met to move up, roughly what that would take, and an honest statement of the ceiling based on three weeks of evidence rather than an opinion formed on day one.
You walk out holding it, and your surgeon or doctor gets a letter if anything needs their attention.
If the answer is that little is recoverable, you are told that in week 3 with the measurements behind it, rather than sold a program. A review that ends with “this is genuinely as good as it gets, and here is the data” has done its job.
Who runs it
Matched to what happened to you
All three appointments are with the same therapist, matched to your injury rather than to whoever is free. Seeing the same person across the three weeks is the point: they took the first measurements and they know what they expected to change.
Hand, wrist and elbow
Mavis Tham
Wrist fractures and wrist ligament injuries. Around 250 wrist fractures since 2018, plus about 200 ligament injuries including TFCC tears first treated as sprains.
Shamaine Soh
Stiffness, scar tightness and adhesions after hand or wrist surgery. Hand and finger fractures, wrist fractures and TFCC, finger ligament repairs.
Yuna Zhuang
Carpal and cubital tunnel, and the wrist injuries of climbers, racquet players and people who train.
Nurul Nadzirah
Finger and wrist fractures, over a decade of them, and more than 500 mothers with De Quervain’s.
Shoulder, back, hip, knee, ankle and foot
Fairuuz Saleh
Knees after ACL reconstruction and the long road back to sport, hip pain including labral tears, and the lower back problems that drive both. Over 1,000 cases since 1997.
Zita Sham
Shoulders that stopped short after a rotator cuff injury or repair, achilles tendinopathy, and ankle and foot injuries that will not settle.
Shiv Mohan Banka
Shoulder and knee problems, spinal dysfunction, and exercise rehabilitation where muscle imbalance is holding the joint back.
Ching Yee
Knees and hips after joint replacement, including the ones that plateaued before full range came back. 200 total knee replacements since 2016.
The offer
What it costs
Stalled Recovery Review
Three 45-minute appointments, one a week for three weeks, at $230 per appointment, nett, no GST. Booked as a block so all three weeks are already in the diary with the same therapist.
- Full history, including the therapy you have already had
- Range, strength and function measured against your other side, three times
- Grip and pinch in kilograms for a hand; balance, single-leg strength and gait where the problem is a leg
- Treatment from the first appointment, at a load the tissue can take
- A home program, adjusted each week to what the numbers showed
- A stage diagnosis against the Phoenix Recovery Protocol
- A written plan with an honest ceiling, based on three weeks of evidence
- A letter to your surgeon or doctor if anything needs their attention
If a program follows, it is quoted from the number of appointments your therapist writes down, at the same $230 each. If the review ends early, we refund the unused appointments. There is no obligation to continue, and the review stands on its own.
Questions we get asked
Is this only for hands?
No. It runs for any joint that healed but did not finish recovering. Hand, wrist and elbow are seen by a Principal Hand Occupational Therapist; shoulders, backs, hips, knees, ankles and feet are seen by a senior physiotherapist. The method is the same either way, because the question is the same: what is measurably missing, and does it move.
Can I just do one appointment instead?
Yes. A standard first appointment is 45 minutes at $230 and you are welcome to start there. What you get is a baseline, treatment and an opinion, which is useful. What you do not get is the answer to whether it moves, because that needs a second and third measurement to exist.
Why not do it all in one longer visit?
Because a joint that has been stiff for months cannot take ninety minutes of work in one sitting without flaring, and because the question you are paying to have answered is what changes between appointments. One long visit gives you more measurements on the same day, which is not the same information.
How long is too long?
There is no clean cutoff. Stiffness that has been there six months shifts more slowly than stiffness at six weeks, and mature scar behaves differently from fresh scar. People come to us a year or more out and still gain range. What changes with time is the rate and the ceiling, not whether it is worth measuring.
Do I need my surgeon’s permission?
No, and you do not need a referral. Bring the operation note, discharge summary or X-ray report if you have them. If your case needs your surgeon’s input before we load anything, we tell you and write to them.
What if it turns out nothing can be done?
Then you are told, with three weeks of measurements behind it. That is a legitimate outcome of this review and it is worth knowing, because people spend years half-expecting to get back to something nobody has ever assessed.
Can I claim it on insurance?
Often yes, particularly where it relates to an operation. It depends on your policy. Send us your policy details before you book and we will tell you what applies. Itemized invoices provided, and a clinical report if your insurer asks.
Where we are
Clinics across Singapore
Tell us where it stopped
What happened, roughly when, what was done about it, and what you cannot do now that you could before. We will tell you whether this review is the right next step, and which therapist it should be with.
Timeframes and case counts on this page are typical figures and clinician-reported experience, not predictions for your recovery. Physiotherapists and hand therapists assess, treat, splint, exercise, educate and refer; doctors diagnose, inject, prescribe and order imaging. If we find something that needs medical review we refer you back to your doctor.
What our patients say
Google reviews from our clinics in Singapore.
