All the Broken Bodies: My Life as a Physical Therapist

By Martha Thomas PT

Martha Thomas chose a career in physical therapy because she witnessed first-hand how the practice helped her grandmother. Despite being told the field needed more men and not women, Martha pursued her education in PT and was eventually hired by the very man who had tried to discourage her. It wasn't easy. Many challenges awaited her, yet over nearly forty years of practicing her profession, Martha gleaned wisdom not only about treating patients but about life, humanity, and compassion. "All The Broken Bodies: My Life as a Physical Therapist" contains the stories of her most memorable patients and what she learned from them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350935332

Book preview

PART I

Girls Need Not Apply

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

—Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Introduction

A tall, raw-boned woman and a bit on the heavy side, Grandma Ada went down hard when she fell. An old knee injury made her unsteady on her feet; she used a cane to get around, but for some reason that day, she’d left it sitting unused while she made her way into the living room. The nylon stockings she wore slid right out from under her on our hardwood floor, and Grandma landed with a loud thud. I rushed to help her, along with my mother and brother.

Grandma burst into tears. The force of the fall had caused her to urinate on herself. Her dignity in tatters, she felt ashamed and embarrassed, so we kids pretended we didn’t notice her wet clothing as we helped our mother get her into a chair. Mom took over and cleaned her up.

I adored Grandma Ada. She was pillowy soft and so kind and loving. During the fifteen years she’d lived with us on and off, she taught me how to bake delicious sweets and stitch things by hand, and she’d often shared the story of how as a child, she had fallen on an exposed railroad spike while walking train tracks with her brothers, looking for wild game in the Missouri Ozarks. Good medical care was hard to come by in her rural community, so the wound wasn’t treated properly. It didn’t kill her, neither did it heal correctly. She’d developed severe osteoarthritis in her knee that worsened as she aged, and now she had reinjured it, right in the comfort of our living room.

I felt so sad for Grandma Ada, and wished I could ease her pain. She’d suffered a great indignity in front of us all but thank God we were there to help her. She eventually got cortisone shots in her bad knee, but those only gave temporary relief. She lived on Bufferin and used a heating pad. As a teenager, with my newly acquired driver’s license, I drove her to physical therapy appointments at Belleville Memorial Hospital, where I accompanied her to the basement. In those days, physical therapy was often relegated to basements as it was not considered an integral part of patient care.

While therapists worked with my grandmother, I waited patiently, observing all that went on around me. The PT staff were kind and helpful; they cared for my grandmother with a gentle touch, using heat, massage, and exercises to strengthen her knee. To me, it looked as if they loved their work. They seemed to be having fun and actually enjoying themselves.

I grew up in an era when girls aspired to only a handful of career options. In grade school, most of us girls had the impression that we could choose from only a handful of careers—housewife, nurse, teacher, or secretary. By the time I graduated high school, however, more young women had begun to attend college, although their career choices were still quite traditional. Most of my female friends planned to become teachers. A few chose nursing. Some wanted to go to secretarial school to hone their typing and shorthand skills. None of those career paths held any interest for me.

Times were turbulent in my graduation year of 1968. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and the violent protests it generated, as well as the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. left many of us young people feeling afraid of the future. The draft was in effect, and we lost classmates in the war. The road ahead seemed so uncertain.

I longed to move forward in life in a way that made sense in a chaotic world. I wanted to make a difference. As I watched the compassionate physical therapists do their best to ease my grandmother’s suffering, it occurred to me that maybe I had found my path forward in life. If I could learn to help people deal with and recover from physical disabilities, I would make my Grandma Ada proud and enjoy a fulfilling, meaningful career.

One day, a friend and I visited the physical therapy departments in Belleville’s two hospitals. At Belleville Memorial, the same facility to which I’d taken my grandmother for her appointments, we spoke to Don, the department head. Enthusiastically we told him we wanted to become therapists. To our shock and dismay, he discouraged us. There are already too many women in the field, he said dismissively. We need more men, not women. Why don’t you girls go into nursing instead?

That infuriated me. I knew right then and there that I would defy Don and pursue physical therapy with all I had. Before long, I was accepted to the PT program at the University of Kentucky, one of just sixteen students chosen out of around 600 applicants, and I began my studies there in 1970.

Things got off to a rough start. When confronted with the anatomy lab, I almost quit the program immediately. The stench of dead bodies mingled with formaldehyde made me physically ill. Every single day, Bob, the lab assistant, munched on donuts and sipped coffee as if the disgusting odors had no effect on him. Just watching him enjoy his snacks, even as he demonstrated how to dissect fatty tissue away from muscle and ligament attachments, made me retch. I lost my appetite. Ten pounds dropped off me during that first semester. No matter how vigorously I tried, I could not wash the sickeningly sour-sweet smell off my skin, hair, or clothing.

Thankfully, I managed to stick it out. I am so glad I did! Never have I wanted to be, or do, anything else but a physical therapist. All throughout my career, it has been immensely gratifying to assist injured people and help them become their best physical selves. Always challenging, never dull, continually rewarding, physical therapy gave back to me more than I could possibly give. I never stopped learning about how best to meet the needs of the patients who came into my care. The lessons I learned as a body mechanic have shaped me into the person I am today and taught me invaluable truths about life, people, and the common threads that bind us all together.

Chapter One

From Katz’s to Kysoc

The inner workings of the human body have always fascinated me. As a little girl, I quickly outgrew playing with dolls in favor of playing sports with my brothers. I was on a girls’ softball team. I climbed trees, roller-skated, and spent most of my summers at the local pool and swimming with the Dorchester swim team. When I wanted to do something by myself, I enjoyed tinkering around with a chemistry set and my invisible man and woman—plastic, see-through human forms that revealed all the bones and organs inside. Perhaps my love of sports fueled my interest in such things. Yet deep down inside, I knew I wanted to have an occupation where I could have a chance to make a difference in people’s lives.

Could that have been because I’d grown up in an unstable family due to my father’s alcoholism? The seeds of my tendency toward caretaking were likely sown in childhood. My parents were unhappy. Constantly worried about them, feeling sad for them, I did whatever I could to help them in ways beyond the scope of a young person’s knowledge and experience. On many a morning, I tried to help my father sober up so he could go to work. I did laundry and other household chores beyond my capacity in hopes of smoothing things over and making life easier for my mother.

Grandma Ada also needed my help as I grew into my teen years. Since Mom and Dad worked full time, I drove my grandmother around town, taking her shopping and to her medical appointments. Sliding into that caregiving role felt natural to me. However, whenever the tension in our home threatened to boil over, I knew I had to take care of myself and get out of there. Many a peaceful evening was spent at friends’ homes, in which alcohol played a minor or non-existent role.

My mother encouraged me to aim for college and escape the confines of our unhappy home. She wanted me to have an education and a good career, and although she realized the unhealthy environment of our household wasn’t good for me, it was probably painful for her to think about letting me go. I’d been her helper for many years; I ran interference between her and Dad and tried to pick up the pieces after explosive arguments by doing practical chores my mother was in no condition to tackle. Still, she insisted on college for me, in an era when many girls considered high school graduation to be the end of their formal education.

I almost blew it! Not taking my high school studies seriously, I preferred to throw my energies into sports and social life. I’d always been somewhat of a tomboy growing up. I enjoyed being with my friends and plunged myself into the middle of every activity and event. I taught swimming lessons and relished performing in school plays.

Over time, and without fully realizing what was happening, I drifted into the role of an average student. Then one day, I had an epiphany. My part-time job at Katz’s Department Store in downtown Belleville had me working in the women’s wear department with several older ladies in their fifties and sixties. They hobbled around all day wearing high heels, their knees hurting, folding clothes, and ringing up purchases. One day, I stood there at the cash register, watching them. It dawned on me that this could be my future if I didn’t buckle down and pay attention to my studies. Did I really want to be walking around on sore feet, doing the mindless work of folding blouses and pants for decades to come?

Absolutely not! Shaken at the prospect, I vowed to apply myself from that day forward. At sixteen and nearing the end of my junior year, I’d let a lot of water flow under the bridge. Now, I was determined to make up for lost time. I worked hard, brought my grades up, and applied for community college.

I’d already decided on physical therapy, and as I pursued the science courses I needed at Southwestern Illinois College, I blossomed academically. I hired a tutor to help me get up to speed in math, physics, and chemistry. I worked my behind off to earn top grades so I could get into the University of Kentucky’s heavily science-based physical therapy program. The thought of learning more about the human body thrilled me, for by this time, I was enamored with the idea of becoming a healer.

When the acceptance letter came in the mail, I screamed, jumped up and down, and ran to show it to my parents. All that summer, I basked in a job well done. My essay on how Grandma Ada’s predicament influenced me to help people suffering from physical pain must have helped sway the admissions committee, as well as the fact that I’d been blessed with glowing references.

Before I could show up for school, however, the University of Kentucky required me to give a week of my time to Camp Kysoc, a summer camp for handicapped children. In this, I was not alone; all of the university’s new PT students had to report to the camp during that August of 1970. Set in a beautiful countryside property and operated by the Easter Seals Society, Camp Kysoc hosted 27,000 disabled children and adults in overnight programs from 1960 to 2010.

My week at Camp Kysoc launched me from the frying pan of academic rigor into the fire of reality. My fellow PT students and I survived only because we were young and idealistic. What an eye-opening experience to live in a cabin, surrounded by handicapped children from ages five to eighteen! All of them were in various stages of disability. Some couldn’t speak. Some couldn’t walk. Some had to be fed, and some were in diapers, needing to be toileted and bathed.

Mr. MacDougal, the director of the physical therapy program at the University of Kentucky, was adamant about giving us a well-rounded PT education. He wanted us to arrive with a little experience under our belts, and putting naïve, idealistic twenty-year-olds into cabins with handicapped children did the trick nicely. Nothing in my life had prepared me for that week at camp. It overwhelmed me completely!

Many of the children at Camp Kysoc had cerebral palsy. They were intelligent, with normally functioning brains, but with bodies that didn’t work. Some could ambulate with jerky movements, while others were wheelchair-bound. A few of the campers had Down’s syndrome. Thankfully, we weren’t expected to care for them alone, but were each paired with a senior counselor who could instruct and guide us in meeting the children’s needs:

Watch carefully, Martha. This is how you get Suzy in and out of bed.

Johnny can’t feed himself. Watch how I do this; he’ll look you in the eye when he’s ready for another bite.

Stephen can’t speak, but he’ll tilt his head a certain way when he has to go to the toilet. This is how you transfer him from his wheelchair to the commode.

It was