Wake Up, Take Action: A Therapy Reflection
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[00:00:00] Hello folks. Just at about every morning I am singing a song to my daughters to, to wake them up the girls are waking up to a song by Harold Melvin and the blue notes.
Featuring Teddy Pendergrass, you've, I'm sure you've heard this song before. It's wake up everybody, and there's a part in this song that just gets me every time, right? The, this song. He says wake up all the doctors. Make the old people well, 'cause they're the ones who suffer and catch all the hell.
And may. Maybe I should go ahead and finish it. He also says but they don't have so very long before the judgment day. So once you make them happy before they pass away. And there's a thought that comes to mind each time I hear this part of the song, [00:01:00] and it takes me back to when I was in grad school.
This is the summer of 2015. I had not gotten any sort of like clinical experience from grad school. This was all like didactic. I might have had some practice, like with lab or going out to like stroke clinics or like just seeing how to treat stroke victims or people with suffering from stroke.
And, but there was no like, like real experience treating these clients. Nothing at all. What I have now, or, again, like during some of those internships where I might've been able to treat these people. So I'm giving you some context, if not a really good excuse as to why I did not help my grandmother who was recovering from a stroke at that time.
So we had about a solid month, if not a little over, five weeks off from grad school. So I go home [00:02:00] to Joshua Tree and I'm, all my family is there. So we're all pitching in to, to help my mother, my grandmother, whether it's like changing her adult diaper transferring her from her bed to her wheelchair or vice versa.
Preparing meals for like getting her cleaned up. Like we, we were all taking a very active role in, in getting getting her knees met. But as I reflect, and even then there was a feeling of, hey I know something, and I, I. I could work on her, I can do physical therapy on her.
And she wasn't getting any physical therapy at the time. She had been discharged. She had been discharged from a, like a skilled nursing facility there. She had some home pt. If you're familiar with how home PT works they get you better or sorry. They get you back to your status quo, like how you were performing in your home.
Before you were hospitalized and she [00:03:00] checked all the boxes. So they, they don't necessarily go above and beyond and there weren't any resources, to where we can get like a like a outpatient, physical therapist to come in and work with her. I don't even think.
That, that's still available there. I should look into it. I might move back. I might bring that to, to Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree. But I knew enough to where I can say. Let's just take one extra step before you get into your wheelchair, and then, getting back into bed, maybe I'm gonna lock the wheelchair, maybe about four or five steps, away from the bed to where you can just do a little bit more getting into bed than what you did getting out.
I had enough information to where I could have. Grabbed one of her broomsticks or mop mops and, had her hold onto this to help with the grip strength and guide her in bringing this, this stick, overhead to where now she's using this extremity a little bit [00:04:00] more.
I didn't do it like at all, and when I know I could have. The, I don't know the it was partly like a little bit of imposter syndrome. Do I really know what I'm doing? If I were to practice with this, can she can see, can she possibly get hurt? Absolutely.
Yeah. All those things could be true. Absolutely. But it was more the fact that I like just didn't try. And especially with her being just lifting a stick overhead or again, like an extra step. Like she was able to do it. We just didn't do it. We made. Things very easy for her because it was, so many days before her judgment day ended up being, three years beforehand.
And who knows if I would've been able to extend that further had I pushed her right? Had I had her to to do a little bit more than what we practiced. I say that [00:05:00] because. I feel like we all have a choice, in, in our everyday of what we can do to get a little bit better and yeah, work, family, other things get in the way of our physical health.
But that's really all that we have. If we were to take that away the question. Whenever I'm like meeting like new friends we throw, random questions at each other. Hey, would you rather be, what was that like? Have an 80-year-old mind and a 20-year-old body, or what is it?
A, a 20-year-old mind and an 80-year-old body and, little things like that. And our physical health is just really all that we have. And I felt like we can move up the ladder, corporate ladder and earn a bunch of money. But, if our heart is failing us and our legs are weak and painful we can't go out.
On any sort of a vacation to enjoy it. Then what's the point? Really what's the point of it all? So a question [00:06:00] that has been coming up in the clinic lately, just because of all the snow this is after people have canceled and all the, it is being too much ice on the ground is does the cold make, does the cold cause pain?
It's so darn cold outside. It felt like my pain is getting worse. Is that, does the mother of nature have that effect and. Yeah, it, yes and no. The cold indirectly would make you want to stay in, right? If I'm walking in a cold my, my shoulders tend to go up toward my ears. That is something that I feel would naturally happen.
I tend to clinch a lot when I'm walking in the cold. But that's like me outside for a lot of people. They're just not going outside, so they're moving less. And if they're moving less, then they're going to tighten up a little bit. Some muscles might get a bit weaker and there goes your pain, right?
So when you're 20 [00:07:00] something years old and you've been doing something just about every day, let's say it's like running every day and you decide to take a week off, when you go back out there, like you can more or less bounce back. And as we age, we can't really do that.
Taking a week off, it's like taking a month off. And we can see some pretty dramatic declines in cross-sectional area of like muscle fibers. The motor control or coordination, like these things they get lost pretty quickly. What does this have to do with anything?
What does it have to do with Teddy Pendergrass and treating the old people well? What does this have to do with the cold? What, how does all this sort of tie in? Like me as a grad student back in 2015 I still feel like we, we know enough to make a choice and getting ourselves or the people around us better.
If you're listening as a patient, a client if you're listening as a physical therapist or just a, a random listener could be [00:08:00] a caregiver, we know enough and. We definitely have a track record of in our own lives of when we work towards something, we tend to get a little better at it, right?
So to patients who are stuck in the cold to patients who are, maybe, I don't know if like mentally stuck in a rut or something like the, you still have a choice and. Are you going to get really good at being the world's best sitting marathoner or like a walking marathoner?
Are you gonna be active? Are you gonna be on your feet, or are you going to get really good at not moving? Because we are training our body every day we're molding it, we're shaping it to get better at doing one thing. We're getting our 10,000 hours in towards something every day.
This is happening every [00:09:00] day. So I just want to bring that to your attention that th this is not a dress rehearsal, right? If you're, if you feel comfortable kicking your feet up, if you feel comfortable in that recliner and you feel un uncomfortable standing up and walking around, what is your body telling you?
Outside looking in. If someone tells you, I feel much better sitting down and I don't feel all that great, standing or walking around what does outside looking in, I'm gonna say maybe you should sit down a little bit more. Stay comfortable. Stay comfortable, right?
Never move. But is that really the thing that you should do? My, my grandmother was comfortable for another three years, but could she had been even more comfortable? Could she have suffered? Could she have suffered I don't know, three to six months of just, I don't know, muscle soreness?
What is it? Her muscles being stretched, [00:10:00] her muscles growing. Her bones getting stronger because she have endured. The work that it would take, to get her stronger and better, to live an additional three years, that is a total of six instead of, just a three.
I would guess yes. I think most people like that math. I think most people like that math. But it's boring. It's hard work and it's not so fun. But when this is all that we have this time is all that we have. And for those with grandchildren, for those with, just kids or friends and you want to see what it's like to be 120 high functioning.
Like you, I believe you could do it, what you will have to work for it. Again, comfort seems like a really nice place, but nothing really grows there. So I invite you to get out of that chair to get outta your [00:11:00] seat and. Go to a place of discomfort. Until next time. Wake up, everybody. Wake up.
