Fragments From Floyd

Today marks the beginning of yet another flashback chapter in this odd life. Three years ago, I had abandoned teaching and given up physical therapy, far as I knew, for good. Then a year and a half ago, I got the call from Radford inviting me to pick up the chalk again. Now, also by passive good fortune and timing, I've agreed to return part-time to the physical therapy clinic. It will be on a trial basis by my wishes; I'm not certain how 'physical' I can be, since the hands don't cooperate so well now for many of the things that a therapist routinely does with their greatest asset--a strong pair of skilled hands. We'll see how it goes today.

This role will be a change from teaching in many ways. Teaching challenged me to dig deeply into the issues facing the global environment as we discussed these matters in class, and I dealt mostly with the class en mass, in a vertical sort of relationship between faculty and student. In the clinic, the digging is very focused on specific joints or function problems of an individual that you come to know very well. I will spend more one-on-one time with a patient on the first visit than I spent with any given student the whole semester, and it is their ecosystem of joints, bones and muscles that will be the focus of my concerns. It is a much more 'horizontal' person to person interaction that happens here.

I could make the comparison that in teaching, you always bring your work home with you and that in clinical practice, you don't. But that wouldn't be completely true. Many nights, I used to lie awake puzzling out patient problems of balance or pain and how best to adapt that person's work or home setting to give them back as much of their full physical lives as I could. (More often than not, the sleeplessness came from issues related to trying to make sense of screwy policies or personnel, and the heavy hand of the insurance companies.) I suppose to some extent, I'll be doing that again, though reimbursement and management issues won't be mine this time. There is gratification in teaching when a student has an 'AHA!' moment of insight, just as there is when a patient has a similar moment, realizing they can tie their shoes or play golf again for the first time in six months. I am expecting this to be as good a return to PT as the experience at Radford has been to teaching.

And, being a place for new beginnings, I'm thinking that my blogging schedule is a place where change is needed. I'll be working Tuesdays and Fridays, so may not post anything those days. And while mornings are my best times for blogging, they are also my best times for other writing that needs to come first for a while. So, don't be surprised if you don't start seeing new posts come closer to noon or later. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got, they say. I need to get some different stuff from my time at the keyboard. Change comes hard, but it will come. And what better time for a change of pace and pattern than here, at the beginning of a new year.