Case Study

This post is less about the case study than it is about the person that it was with.  Nice title for the post, right?The thing is that the person I worked with was my Clinical Instructor for Pediatrics about 11 years ago.  At the time I wasn't well thought of by my PT school faculty, but there wasn't much they could do to someone going MCL or SCL every semester.When I got to Trish for pediatrics, I suppose I made the right impression, and her voice back to the jerks at my PT school kept them off my back for the rest of the time.  I'm sure they were shocked, but it all worked out.So being able to come back over a decade later and work some magic with Trish was a special moment for me.  She was thanking me, but it is I that should be thanking her.I'm finding I am doing a lot of thanking recently, specifically to 2 of my current mentors, Gray and Coach Boyle.  Things must not be so bad I guess.Anyway, Trish did some kind of twisting torquing fall down and go boom thing with her left knee like 2 weeks ago.   So she's been icing and hobbling around, and maybe a few days ago, she felt at least she was getting on top of the swelling.Pain in terminal flexion and extension.  Everything smells like meniscus.I poo'd a full eval and just confirmed a quick Cyriax impression of the knee if for no other reason to go back for test-retest.SFMA: MSF-FN, MSE-DN, MSR-DN Asym, SLS-DN Asym, DS-DP, MRE-FN, LRF-FN, c/s-FNGua Sha to anterior thigh and posterior capsule.  Rectus Femoris lit up like a Christmas Tress.Walking with verbal cues of long steps, pull your hip through, push off with the toes.  The brain likes the words push and pull.  Try it.Mulligan tape to the ankle.  Would have liked to have tried to the knee to see if it was better, but the lotion from the Gua Sha would have made the tape worthless.Walking w/med ball overhead. Improved.Full lunge with med ball squeeze.  Abolished.(You notice the McKenzie terms?) No time to address breathing in an effort to get at the DNs of Extension and Rotation, but it was very interesting that this is her right knee, and it's her right hip that always "goes out," AND she can't do right-leg back Warrior progressions in yoga.I don't know enough about the variants available for Warrior, but I did suggest to her, and she understood what I mean, that she didn't have the right to explore those excursions of hip extension when the basic movement was not functional by a lesser standard.Well, this morning (about 15 hrs after treatment), the puppy attacks her in bed, and if I understood her correctly, she was uninhibited in chasing after her.  This is after 2 weeks of life-affecting pain.Look, nothing we did will change what her meniscus looks like on MRI or if a surgeon will be warranted to do something surgically.  What we did do is normalize the local and regional systems and remind the brain that things aren't so bad.  Then we fix the interregional systems, and like the most of us, we can play the odds that the meniscal tear may be non-impactful.Folks, be blessed that your children not need someone like Dr. Trish West-Low for pediatric physical therapy.But if they do, she has the passion and intensity that I am not too humble to recognize in myself.   Maybe I learned it from her.https://www.kula-kamala-yoga.com/Trish.htmlShe thanked me.I'm still thanking her.