Why I Do Physical Therapy

One day during physical therapy, my physical therapist made a suggestion that I found insightful. As I am shifting my career goals, I was given the suggestion to look into PT school. The assumption was that since I have been in physical therapy throughout my life and with my experiences having cerebral palsy, seemed like a practical career fit. I want to focus on why I go to physical therapy in the first place. In an earlier post, I mentioned that physical therapy won’t “fix” me unlike the majority of people who go for rehabbing or specific goals.

Every day I have gone to a new physical therapist, it has been for different reasons. When I was younger, it was for gait improvement. As I got older, I went for leg strengthening. Then I had a short stint where I worked on core strengthening and stability. Since August, I have been going to physical therapy again. In an ideal world, I would want physical therapy to do all these amazing things to my body where I wouldn’t need to use crutches, balance better, walk without being stiff, and maybe the ability to do a backflip. Unfortunately, I don’t live in that world, and I am ok with that.

The underlying, deeper reason that I go is out of fear. I always go back to the phrase, “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it”. I walk regularly, but I have a bad habit of not exercising my legs outside of PT. The less I exercise them, the more likely I will lose function and ability to them. Walking is harder for me now than it was when I was younger. The modes of transportation that I use daily go between crutches and wheelchair. My crutches are like my best friends, they’ve been with me since I was born. It’s way too early for me to leave them for a wheelchair full time. Wheelchairs are convenient, but that’s never what I used to identify myself with. Physical therapy keeps me in the mindset that I need to continuously work on my legs.

This post wasn’t meant to be anything inspirational. The more I think about blog ideas and topics, I realize that I want to show all the sides of my personality. If it means that I am honest and vulnerable with my thoughts, then I am ok with that, too.