Hey everybody, this is Mike Uhrlaub with another episode of Power Your Life. I am so glad to be back with you guys. Today I wanted to deviate a little bit from our normal. We’ve been talking a lot about spinal issues, back pain, spinal stenosis, and herniated disc. We’ve been talking about a lot of things, but I wanted to take the time and slow it up a little bit. What is gratitude? What is the value of gratitude? The definition of gratitude, according to the dictionary, is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation and return kindness.
Why am I even talking about this?
The reason I’m talking about this today is I deeply feel that we are lacking a sense of gratitude in our healthcare system and in our entire society. I’m noticing where we’re not seeing the value of gratitude or seeing gratitude period being shown in the healthcare system with the way it’s set up right now. As a physical therapist I want to help others heal from their physical injuries.
I became a physical therapist because way back in high school I had two knee injuries and I had to have surgery on my left knee my senior year from a football injury in October.
Then I had another injury on my right knee. It was in my first wrestling practice back after getting the release from my doctor and on my left knee. I was still super excited and it was in the first 10 minutes of practice. I twisted my knee, tore up some cartilage and had to have another surgery. It took some time to be able to get back on the mat after that. The physical therapist who worked with me back hometown of Hastings, Nebraska, Gene Parks. He was amazing. He is the one that really motivated me and got me back into sports. He’s the one that showed me what to do.
It changed life for me.
Having to go through that experience. Having something that I really care about taken away. Football then wrestling; sports were extremely important to me at the time. Just like they are to a lot of our kids nowadays. We’re seeing this happen with COVID. Unfortunately there’s a lot of kids who have prepared and worked really hard for their last year in high school and sports. In many cases across the country that’s being taken away from them.
They’re learning a hard lesson, just like I learned, at any given time anything you have can be taken away from you at any moment without warning. Just as my ability to play football was completely taken away and then wrestling was taken away. I had to work really hard and thankfully I was able to get back into it. I was extremely grateful for the hard work, guidance, and everything he did to help me earn my way back onto the team and to get healthy.
That really ignited a fire inside of me.
I wanted to give back and help people heal from their physical ailments. That ultimately is what led me into this amazing profession of physical therapy. I’m very grateful for all of those. I’ve been a physical therapist for 23 years. I’ve seen a lot of patients and I am truly grateful for all of those that I have had the opportunity to help.
It seems to me this gratefulness, this gratitude, has been missing. I haven’t been seeing it in our healthcare system and in our society. There’s so much fear. There’s so much worry. People are very scared. They are scared of COVID. It’s completely changed everything that we do and I’m seeing this come through in certain areas.
A few days ago….
I saw a client and she had an ankle injury. She had kind of stepped wrong in her backyard. There was a hole in the hill where she was walking. She stepped in this hole and twisted her ankle. She couldn’t get up, couldn’t use crutches. It was very painful and they had to transport her to the emergency room by ambulance. She told me in the first session we had together that this was the most unusual experience she has ever had (in relations to getting an injury taken care of).
I’m sitting down talking to her getting ready to examine her ankle, making sure it’s moving and we’re checking the ligaments. She told me this was the first time anyone in the healthcare system actually physically touched her ankle since the injury, which had happened about a month ago, even with her visit to the emergency room and her doctor’s visits. No one had physically examined her ankle.
I was just blown away.
She said in the emergency room, they wouldn’t even touch her physically. They took x-rays, ruled out a fracture and told her “we’ll just wrap it, here’s a brace, you can put it on and go see your doctor”. Then, her family doctor wouldn’t see her in the office because of COVID, they just did a televisit. She had so many questions and said it was just really unusual. She said, “I can’t believe that our healthcare system is going to diagnose me without actually having physically examine me”. I had to agree with her. I was blown away and didn’t know what to say.
That got me thinking about what is going on in our society today.
What’s going on in our world? What’s going on with healthcare? It seems to me that everyone is living in so much fear. So much worry about the coronavirus (also called COVID-19) that in a lot of cases, we’re losing our compassion for people.
Now, I want to say as a disclaimer, there are many of those in the healthcare system that are serving selflessly. They are giving everything. We saw that with some of the first responders and the healthcare workers in New York City. We’ve seen that time and time again around the world. People are in the healthcare system, putting their lives on the line in order to help those in need. So I don’t want you to think that we don’t know that’s happening, but in general, I really feel we’re starting to lose our compassion. When you won’t look at somebody or touch somebody’s ankle to examine it after they’ve had an injury because you’re afraid of COVID, to me that doesn’t show compassion. I think that’s a concern. 
There should be gratitude on the side of every healthcare worker for having the opportunity to help and serve another person. That’s what we went into this profession to do. I kind of looked back at my career and patients just kind of popped up. It got me thinking about another client, and I started really thinking about what is gratitude AND what is the value of gratitude in the healthcare system. This client I had many years ago is a really good example of gratitude. I don’t want to reveal her identity so I’m just going to call her Alice.
The Story of Alice
Alice came to me with a shoulder issue and I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. Most of the time when I come into a room, the client’s sitting down and they are waiting for me. When I came into the room with Alice, it was very different. She was pacing around the room back and forth, and she couldn’t sit down. I could tell she was very agitated and upset. When I went to talk to her, she didn’t want to sit down or stop moving. I could see tears welling up in her eyes as she was telling me how bad her shoulder hurt. She had been to three other therapy clinics in the course of trying to get this taken care of and two other orthopedic surgeons. She just felt that no one was taking her seriously and she just couldn’t move it.
It was very painful. Tears started streaming down her face and my heart just went out to her. After working with her that short time, I could tell no one would actually just sit down and have a conversation, try and help her. In healthcare, we’re just busy. We’re in and out. When was the last time that you went to your healthcare provider’s office and they just sat down to have a conversation with you? They actually got to know you as a person and care for you? But because of insurance restrictions and the way our system’s set up, you’re in there, they write a prescription, and you’re out.
Alice felt she wasn’t being valued.
Her shoulder was very painful. She had a lot of problems with it. she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t put her shirt on, was having trouble driving and working. She didn’t feel anybody was really listening to her. They were just kind of saying, “oh, well, x-rays, didn’t show anything. Your MRI doesn’t show anything, it can’t be that bad”. They would just brush her off. I understood because she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t put her shirt on, was having trouble driving and working.
It took us a long time to get her better. Many of our sessions took a lot longer than what they normally would have. But I knew it was important to Alice that we make sure we took the time. That we left no stone unturned. There were a lot of sessions where she came in and we didn’t make any progress. She got really frustrated and I could tell our treatment plan wasn’t effective. We’d have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we were missing. We would then reimplement something new. Then she would come in again very teary, upset, and very frustrated.
Finally, after months of us working together, taking the time, truly listening and implementing several different treatment plans, we finally got her shoulder better. It was because we took the time and we listened to her. We valued her as a person. I was able to connect with that client and understand her issues. In turn we were really able to help her. Over the years I continued to work with Alice for other injuries too. She came back and became more than a client. She became a friend of mine.
Alice taught me a lot of things.
She taught me how to really listen to a client, how to literally listen to them, find out where their issue is. Not to just jump in there and try to fix everything right away. But to kind of figure out how this is affecting their life. She taught me the value of slowing down and being patient with my clients. As a therapist, many of us are Type A Personalities. We’re just driven and trying to r get through the day really fast.
But she taught me this is what you do.
You slow down, take your time, and focus on the areas that maybe you’re missing. Like I said, oftentimes in healthcare I see us just getting in a hurry and rushing through things. When you do that you stop seeing a person as a person and they start becoming a number. When they become a number, you start losing your compassion, your humanity, and your gratitude for a fellow human being. I realized during the time I was working with Alice, I never gave up on finding a solution for her shoulder. It took lots of times, patience, and compassion to help her fix it.
I learned so many valuable lessons from that; As a therapist and as a person.
From that process, I even gained a friend. Every single day I learn and experience something new. My experience with Alice has taught me I always should be grateful for each and every encounter with a client or a patient. We learn just as much from you as you can learn from us. This has me today and in the last few days, feeling very grateful. Very grateful for my profession and the privilege of being able to help others. I think all of us could use a little bit of this gratitude in our lives. If you really look at it, really boil it down, you don’t have to be a physical therapist. You don’t have to be in healthcare to help somebody. To change their life. To be grateful.
I think if you look at it, there’s a lesson or something to be grateful for in everything we do and in every experience in life. It’s just a matter of slowing down and looking at it at the end of each day. Think about this. Think about how that would change our world. If all of us could be a little bit more grateful and understanding towards one another. How its mind boggling if every single one of us took the time, how amazing would that be?
I want to leave you with this thought-provoking quote from Charles Swindle;
“In spite of our high tech world and efficient procedures, people remain the essential ingredient of life”.
I’ll let you guys chew on that one for a little while. If you do have any need or you want more information about any back related issues you have, I do have a new eBook. The Five Best Kept Secrets to Fast Back Pain Relief.
You can get your free copy simply by emailing me at mike@flex-pt.com or shoot us a message on Facebook messenger. Say “hey, I want my free back report” and I’ll give it to you.
Shoot us a message to let us know what you thought of the session about gratitude. It really speaks to me and I wanted put it out there.
Until next time, Power Your Life and keep moving forward.
