Embarrassment:
i almost killed (or severely injured) an 87 year old lady during my PT practicals today. I was asked to grab a hot pack to heat her back as well as an eletrical stimulation unit to ease her back pain. She has a pacemaker. So i grabbed the stuff and went over to her bed, placed the hot pack and proceeded to stick the electric pads to her back until i hear this loud, "no!" but i thought it was just a no as in a unlikeable procedure...but it turns out she had a contraindication of a pacemaker that can actually alter her heart beat and cause severe damage. "Pacemaker! Pacemaker!" So i hesitated and asked for help from another PT and she did the same thing i did, which was place the pads to the back; and the same thing happened. My PT instructor finally stopped and asked what was wrong and finally we figured out that the evaluation sheet was wrong. Totally wrong. luckily no one died and all went well....
Inspiration:
She had major pains. she had lost a lot of muscle mass and her body isn't funcitoning as well. She has normal range of motion but the pain is a 7 out of 10 in most situations. She works at a store that involves a lot of lifting, she had incident that made her right leg feel numbness and pain and the normal walking and sitting was too much too handle. She had met with 4 doctors and her assessment revealed something that was repetitive yet not situated to an actual answer until she was finally referred to a Physical Therapist.
I'm not supposed to be involved in any evaluations since I am currently an PT assitant student and PTA's aren't allowed to asses and evaluate, but i was fortunate enough to shadow around DPT who evaluated this specific person with leg pains. I sat down and the patient told the DPT everything that wrote down prior to this paragraph. With the pain and the location and a few exercises (propriception, sharp and dull, manual muscle testing, posture) she concluded on what she believe is that case which was way different than the doctors who had no idea.
"Can i have you lay face down?"
the DPT asked her to lay down and she looked at me and said, "listen to this,"
And then, "pop," which realligned her hip that made her pain significantly decrease as well her strength increase in a matter of seconds. We did the same exercises and the amount of gain that was gathered was amazing. the unaligned hip was creating a nerve imbalance that caused the pain to shoot down her left leg which had been 7 months already. with a quick check of alignment, the PT quickly adjusted her hips to be equal which would free up the nerve that runs down to her leg and release the pinch that caused her pain.
Right then and there, i wanted to stand and clap. lol. that was just amazing...inspiring, indeed.
