11 replies to this topic

[PT Student]

Hi everyone. I am currently a student physical therapist. I was interested to hear about your experiences with physical therapy (whether they were good or bad). Thanks very much!

[Edinburgh Colin]

did you used to pull the wings off flies and the legs off spiders when you were younger, if you did you are halfway trained already.

only joking, my physios were lovely, I had the same girl for 8 of my 9 months in hospital. Red head so fiery but as long as she was not hungry she was great, used to send her to get a sandwitch when she was being a bitch, worked every time, even she agreed.

good luck if you go to a spinal unit you will meet all sorts angry, happy, withdrawn, depressed, generally nuts, all types

keep your sense of humour

[mellowgator]

my friend's mom went through the entire pt program and did well in her classes. when she got to the part of the training where she worked with patients is where she found her problem. she worked through shands and they have a burn unit. her very first patient was severly burned and she had move his legs. doing this made him scream and cry in agony. this was way too much for her and she quit the program. it would of saved her a lot of time and money if she realized that she didn't have the temperment to work with actual hurting patients. just saying.

[Beautiful]

I loved my therapist. Had her for about 10 years. She was like another mom to me. She always pushed me with a gentle hand because even though if I felt like I wasn't emotionally or physically capable of doing something, she knew I was. When I was 6 it was learning how to swim the backstroke and then roll over so that my body was face-down. I would cry because I was so afraid, but with time, I was able to it. She helped me from simple things like that, to teaching me how to get up curbs by doing wheelies, how to fall out of my chair (that wasn't fun, because she literally flipped my chair backwards at full force!) and get back into it, etc.

In short, I loved my physical therapy time. Looking back on it, I miss it so much. I "graduated" because I learned to do everything I needed to, but still. Recently I've had back surgery, and the doctor wrote me a prescription to go back, but I'm still unsure. I like having it as a memory

[rollingtrouble]

I really hated my PT!!! But- I am so grateful to her for kickin my butt and working so hard with me. To be honest with you, I would take her advice and opinions over my doctors anyday! PTs are what got me to where I could live with myself as best as I could and God bless them all!!!

[paul1404]

Mine was so good that I married her 33 years ago and she is still the BEST !!

[JimG]

I like my PTs.

I use different ones for different things.

One specializes in pool therapy that I do on Mondays.

One specializes in Pilates that I do on Wednesdays.

One is a muscle activation specialist who is the "mother hen" of the clinic and takes the lead in my case that I see on Thursdays.

There are others who fill in/substitute occasionally and will ask me what I've been doing so they can do the same, but I always tell them not to go by that and lets try something different that they want to do.

They all meet regularly and compare notes about my progress.

Until my last surgery, I had a personal trainer that I used 3x/week for years, and while I liked using ONE personal trainer, I like the variety of PTs and getting the different opinions.

[pjcstoke]

Have a look at Standing Start in the UK for their programmes

http://www.standingstart.org/

Peter

[mtnbrooke]

Edinburgh Colin, on Apr 14 2010, 01:00 PM, said:

did you used to pull the wings off flies and the legs off spiders when you were younger, if you did you are halfway trained already.

only joking, my physios were lovely, I had the same girl for 8 of my 9 months in hospital. Red head so fiery but as long as she was not hungry she was great, used to send her to get a sandwitch when she was being a bitch, worked every time, even she agreed.

good luck if you go to a spinal unit you will meet all sorts angry, happy, withdrawn, depressed, generally nuts, all types

keep your sense of humour

wow, as a "caretaker" your honest comment is aggitating to say the least.....

[snodrog742]

mtnbrooke, on Jun 7 2010, 10:53 PM, said:

Edinburgh Colin, on Apr 14 2010, 01:00 PM, said:

did you used to pull the wings off flies and the legs off spiders when you were younger, if you did you are halfway trained already.

only joking, my physios were lovely, I had the same girl for 8 of my 9 months in hospital. Red head so fiery but as long as she was not hungry she was great, used to send her to get a sandwitch when she was being a bitch, worked every time, even she agreed.

good luck if you go to a spinal unit you will meet all sorts angry, happy, withdrawn, depressed, generally nuts, all types

keep your sense of humour

wow, as a "caretaker" your honest comment is aggitating to say the least.....

Not that he needs it, but I agree. I don't know which part was aggitating but I think he nailed it truthfully

[ericr]

therapist live in a fantasy land/

[Edinburgh Colin]

Everyone don't get me wrong, I would not have made the progress I made without them but there is a huge variety in abilities and dedication to their jobs.
I used to really hate the weekends because we had no gym sessions as opposed to 2 per day during the week and I really felt the difference especially on Monday.

As I mentioned I also had a special relationship (well I did, not so sure about her but it drove me on) with my therapist as she was with me from the start when I as in the high dependency unit and all she could do was bend my legs to keep some tone in the muscles through to later making me go up impossible hills in my chair and lie in extremely uncomfortable positions and try and move bits of me.

Some are very good and are driven to improve patients lives in any way they can irrelevant of the therapists age or patirnts ability and some are I think just heartless and cruel and don't really listen which is a huge thing for the SCI person.

I would not have changed it for the world as I would not be able to do what I can not but for them but I sure would with hindsight liked to be able to allocate them to patients better to match skills and abilities.

Still my question remains about pulling wings off flies and spiders and possibly they sharte a gene with dentists!