I do miss working with a physio assistant. I have had the privilege of working with some amazing people over the years who were brilliant, supportive, caring and very good to me. In the beginning there was Helen, Marion and Sue, more recently T (who bought me this fish because she said it pouted like me and has named it Vicky..... she thinks its really funny!)
And most recently 'Eddy' who has looked after me really well for the last couple of years and sends brilliant text messages, some of which I understand! If I held an awards ceremony I would present all of them with a big award with my sincere thanks.
Colleagues and clients will tell you that I mention entering the Olympic Games a fair amount (not me, my clients). I do find anyone who enters a sporting event inspiring. My Dad completed the London Marathon 5 times, the last time only a few months before he died and my husband ran it the following year in his honour. I watched each time and I was absolutely exhausted from all the emotion, cheering strangers on, seeing all the charities they were raising money for and trying to encourage the people who found it more of a challenge but who nevertheless did not give up. I guess I feel an enormous amount of pride for my fellow humans who commit to achieve some sort of physical challenge.
We all know how important exercise is for our health and well-being, but it is those who find sport following and injury or use sport as a way of being independent that I am most inspired by.
We have amazing ambassadors and role models for all sport and the fact that TV coverage of major parasporting events is improving is great.
(I think Boris is great).
Physiotherapy, being all about movement, links very closely with sport. I worked out very early on in my career that physio needs to be fun and not torturous and if it can be combined with a sport or similar activity eg dancing it can be. This is especially true for children. When I took on my first senior role in paediatrics all the children on my caseload hated physio and were almost traumatised at the thought of coming! So I made it my mission to change their minds and make it more fun. With the help of Helen we came up with all sorts of ways of getting the children to do physio including star charts, challenges and, with the full support of parents, bribery! We made it our business to work with school teachers to use PE as a way of delivering physio treatment and we used physio sessions to train for school sports days. These are the worst days of the school year when you are not as physically able as your classmates. We asked the teachers which races a child would be competing in and the smile a child had when for the first time they did not come last and they knew that they had worked hard and achieved something for themselves just made our hearts burst.
Thats why I'm a physio. and I think there was less trauma involved too.
Aquatic physiotherapy is a lot of fun too. To be able to move and control our bodys movements in water where gravity (which is far less than on land) and buoyancy act together with the properties of water takes a lot of skill. To use the water to help someone learn to move, to get stronger, to learn to swim, to access exercise and to even be completely independent for the only time in the week is a very special job to have. I love the water and the opportunities it offers. This week I will be in the water beginning to work with the children and their teachers and I will be on the look out for a future Olympian who will need to take their physio with them to all events....
To do
- start learning about tax...
- buy very waterproof mascara.
Thank you x
Great Blog, Vicky. You are very brave "jumping in the deep end". Best of luck with you new ventures!
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