Marissa, the patient.

Hi! I’m Marissa. Laughably, I don’t mean for this blog title to be a descriptor of my virtue or my personality (i.e. “Marissa, the patient person”), but rather a piece sharing my experience as an actual patient. At this point in my career, with 14 years of being in the physical therapy system (first as a student for 7 years and now as a doctor of physical therapy for 7 years), I’ve had exposure to hundreds of patients throughout multiple settings of the healthcare system. Thankfully, this winter I had the opportunity to become a patient, myself. 

I have been dealing with varying left side hip and knee pain for several months. When my body was irritated, it was VERY irritated. I couldn’t squat, surf, lift, walk down the stairs, hike, or perform my daily activities as a CrossFit coach and a PT. I would modify my demonstrations as a PT to only perform on my right leg, or when I was coaching I would ask another athlete to demonstrate jumping or single leg pistol squats to avoid my embarrassment of not being able to perform.

I was surviving, I wasn’t thriving.

Unfortunately, I think my “surviving” was even a stretch. I truly was unable to perform my daily activities and I kept brushing off my symptoms.

In addition to my hip and knee issues, my chronic left ankle sprain was acting up, and I was noticing I was now leaking during overhead barbell lifts. Now, to be 100% honest, I have leaked during double unders for all 7 years of my CrossFit athlete experience. Have I brushed leaking symptoms off that whole time? Yup. Why? Not sure. Probably because I thought - “Well, it’s just this one activity where that’s happening, and I’ll never get good enough to do double unders in a workout anyway, so I’m fine with avoiding this activity.” But goodness, when I started seeing that incontinence during my overhead barbell lifts, or even when I jumped up to the rig to perform pull ups or toes to bars…that was a huge red flag for me. This “little problem” was now affecting ALL parts of my workout, and it was causing me feelings of stress, embarrassment, annoyance, and further self-critiquing. 

What did I do? Well, I did what any other normal person would do. I continued to avoid those activities. I avoided squatting, I avoided double unders, and ultimately I avoided the gym all together. What was once a place of safety and stress-relief, was now a place of negativity towards myself and it was stressful. My brain wanted nothing to do with those experiences.

I’m not sure what finally prompted me to reach out for help, but one day I realized that not moving or exercising was causing me to feel worse; I was sluggish, cranky, sad, and “not myself”. I decided that day was the day I was going to be vulnerable, ask for help (me?! A professional and a physical therapist asking for help?!) and let someone hear my story to help take care of me. I was not a burden for needing to seek help. I was not supposed to be superwoman. It was ok (and necessary) for me to seek guidance; I knew if I didn’t ask for help I would only regress and feel worse and worse.

This is where my very own doctor of physical therapy stepped into my story! I had connected with Kyle and his wife Lex earlier in the year on a business meet up, since we are all cash based performance physical therapists and entrepreneurs! When I reached out to Kyle for PT guidance, I already knew we had similar ways of approaching care for the whole person. He also had a specific skill set I needed - pelvic health physical therapy - and I knew this was something I couldn’t “fix” on my own.

An important (and vulnerable) piece to my story is that I’m a survivor of trauma. A prior relationship was abusive; after 5 years of mental/emotional/spiritual healing with the help of mentors and counselors, I still had physical healing to work through, and I learned this was directly connected to my pelvic health symptoms.

When I brought alllllllllll my symptoms to Dr. Kyle, he asked other questions that I hadn’t thought about, listened to my story, and provided empathy.  I felt validated. I felt seen. He gave me the same attention that I had learned to give as a provider, and it was refreshing to receive that as a patient. I was so relieved that my case wasn’t a burden and he was able to provide clarity and a direction for me.

The title of this blog is funny because I struggle with patience towards myself. This has been a theme in my healing process and I’m learning to recognize and accept this vice. My tendency for impatience is displayed by rushing my thoughts “I should be stronger by now”, striving “I guess I should be working harder so I will get better faster”, and critiquing “You’re a PT for goodness sake, you should be better by now!” Note all the “shoulds”?! Yikes. 

It has been 6 weeks of my “patient experience” and I’m seeing results in my symptoms, my daily activities, and my overall attitude about my day. Healing takes time, and like I have said thousands of times to others, I now say to myself “Marissa, trust the process.”

These feelings of impatience are normal, and everyone has these experiences. Long standing issues (chronic symptoms) means it will require more specialized and longer times to elicit change.

Waiting was my enemy. I wonder how different my experience would have been if I hadn’t waited so long to ask for help? All I can do now is move forward, continue to seek support, and not try to “muscle it” on my own.

Even a physical therapist can be a patient.

This experience has provided me with so much empathy for everyone going through their rehab process. Trust the process. Ask questions. Find someone who will listen to your story and help you answer your questions. Above all, keep on keeping on, and celebrate your little victories! As both a physical therapist and a patient, rest assured that I am here with you on this same journey. At the end of the day, we’re all humans.

Here’s a link to my current progress!

Instagram post originally by Dr. Kyle Brunelle, PT, DPT of Renegade Movement and Performance: https://www.instagram.com/p/CbgebGENfRC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link