What is this blog if not introspection?

This past week was emotionally draining.  Monday I attended Anna Shields’ graduation from PT school at Emory University – an event that I knew I would attend from the day Anna was accepted, a mere four months after her mother, my dear friend Terri, passed away.  It was a bittersweet but mostly sweet event.  It was spoken and unspoken how much we all missed Terri – her husband Rod, his sister Denise, her niece and grandniece Krystal and Haven, her son Robbie and his partner Tara and of course Anna herself.  She was there in our hearts and minds and overall it was a joyous occasion.

It ended up that there was more emotional impact for me, though.  As the graduation started I cried that Terri was not sitting next to me, but by the end of the graduation I was crying because of the speakers.  One was a man about my age, a physical therapist who had been a pioneer in defining disability in our country  – what it meant, what it means now, how we view it.  He has been a therapist for a mere seven years longer than I and has accolades from our professional organization and many others.   One was an instructor in the program who has been a therapist as long as I have. He spoke of his journey in the profession, how after so many years it still brings him satisfaction.   I thought of my journey – how can it be? How can it be that it is 33 years since I graduated?  Where has the time gone?  How proud I am to have been a therapist all these years even though at times it brought me to my knees.  Then one of the graduates spoke.  That was when the tears really started to flow for me.  The excitement of graduating and starting a career was palpable in the air.  The path to becoming a physical therapist is a grueling one.  The prerequisites.  The competition to be accepted.  The internships.  (One of mine was at the Rehab Institute of Chicago – the very definition of the word terrifying!) It all came rushing back.  The patients I had helped, the lives I changed, the patients I wasn’t able to help despite my best efforts – they started flipping through my mind like an old fashioned flip book.  Mostly a blur,  individual faces without names, names without faces, clinics and hospitals, hallways where I taught patients to walk again, homes that I’d been invited into like a guest – it all flew threw my mind.  It overwhelmed me in its enormity.  How privileged I have been, since the first day I walked into a PT department as a receptionist, to this day – an elder stateswoman of my profession.

This day.  Today is the day I received a note telling me in writing what I have heard so many times in my career.  They are words that have always filled me with pride and humility.  “I have had many therapists – a plethora, really – and none have helped me like you have helped me…”  To see it in writing was astounding and vindicating.  The past few months have been somewhat difficult.  I have entered the outpatient setting where a different set of clinical skills from the ones I have needed for many years are required.  It’s all in there, but I’ve felt inadequate at times – having to constantly return to my books to find specific orthopedic diagnostic tests that I haven’t had to use in years. And yet – teaching my patients about what is going on, giving them something to walk out the door with and use in their daily lives, empowering them to not only be healed by my hands but maintain that healing going forward.  This is my gift, this ability to empower.   I have changed lives not only with my clinical skills,  but with my passion, with my philosophy. I know this.

Earlier in the week I posted on Facebook that I was once again facing the dark night of the soul.  I asked the question “how many times must I endure the dark night of the soul before I awaken?” Exhausted and challenged by being faced with the loss of Terri in such a profound way – welcoming her daughter into my profession, the profession that has taken much and given much more – left me empty and full while needing to get back to work and daily life right away.  And then this thank you letter from a patient I discharged earlier in the week arrived this morning.

The light came more quickly this time and, astoundingly, is the result not of my going into the dark night, but of 33 years years of my own unplanned, one foot in front of the other, keeping my eyes open and my heart aware life.  Terri joked that I was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging Anna from entering the field of PT. When I reminded Anna of that this past week and thanked her for not listening to the discouraging part too much, she told me I had been jaded.  I said “wow, I was JADED?”  She said “those were YOUR words.”   It was true, at the time – probably seven years ago now as we sat and at pizza at Freddie’s pizza in Lafayette and talked about the profession.   Since then I had faith in my original decision, went back and finished my DPT and today, one little thank you note embodied all those people I’ve helped over the years who said the same thing to me and grace rained down on me like never before.

How could one person be so blessed?