How did you find us at CORE?
Well Stephen and Cheryl Dunn go to the same church that I go to and so does Misty, she highly recommended y’all, and Dugie, so I guess I knew some folks who highly recommended the place…
How long did you wait to come see us at CORE?
I guess I first came in for Pilates because I had done Pilates sort of way back when before having babies and I really loved it. It had been a long time, but I was ready to get back into it but then I did the Pilates classes for a little bit and had a, I guess in the summer time, I had an issue in my knee and hip that was acting out. It was until November that finally I said, okay I need to talk to Stephen Dunn, the physical therapist and see about that. I’m definitely the type that says okay well I’ve got this intense pain and I’ll just ignore it and hope it’ll go away, of course it doesn’t… [Stephen] so common… [Jen] Right and so I had this motivation which was that we had booked a ski trip in March and I really love to snow ski, a lot. But because we live in Texas you know, there’s not much snow around here, so we don’t do it that often. So it’s sort of this really special treat and then in November my husband looked at me hobbling up and down the stairs like I was 85 years old or something because of this intense pain I had and he said “are you gonna be able to ski?” I said, “oh man, that will really suck if I can’t ski this year, because it’ll be a few more years before I get another opportunity.” So that motivated me to finally come in and say I need to get this looked at and figure out what is going on…
How bad was your knee problem?
It was because I couldn’t go up and down the stairs… [Stephen] that’s right… [Jen] I had started doing this funny thing when I went up and down the stairs where I would turn to the side and drop one foot down with a straight leg and then bring the other foot down… I felt this intense pain in my hip and my knee when I put pressure on my foot when the leg was bent and so I figured out a way to kind of go down the stairs sideways with a straight leg each time I dropped it down. It took me forever to get up and down the stairs and I couldn’t carry anything up or down stairs, it wasn’t working…
What did you do on the days you went to the grocery?
Well our house has a split level entry and so I would instead of parking the car down in the driveway where I normally would park it, which meant I would have to carry the groceries up all of the stairs up to the kitchen which is on the second floor. I would park out on the street so I could come in the front door and then have fewer stairs to go up and down when I brought the groceries in – yeah I found lots of little ways to try to work around this pain that I was having…
What else did you try before coming to CORE?
Yeah I tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away… that was my main thing and it did not work… [Stephen] I love it…
What did you know about Physical Therapy before coming to CORE?
Years ago, I don’t know if I told you this story. Years ago I had done a little bit of physical therapy when, actually it wasn’t a little, it was like six months of physical therapy because I had a job when I worked in the desk all day long and I had ended up with a pinched nerve in my right shoulder from sitting like that all the time and never unfolding. So I went to physical physical therapy for that a long time ago and it was like I had to come in to physical therapy like two or three times a week. It was very difficult because you know, you’re working a full-time job you don’t have that much time to be going in so often and it took months… this was a very different experience here…
What did you enjoy most about coming to see us?
Your studio is awesome, I mean, it’s like, remember that show from the 80’s, Cheers? It’s like Cheers for a workout studio, like you walk in and everybody is smiling and everybody’s so friendly and everybody’s chatting and it just makes it so that it’s painless to come in and work out and do a class. Folks will chat and joke around during class and it’s just so enjoyable and what I really loved about the physical therapy piece of coming in here is that Stephen really walked me through a series of exercises to do at home so I didn’t have to do a bazillion physical therapy appointments. It was really manageable and really doable, it wasn’t like a huge imposition on you know our busy family schedule that I have. I came in for just enough sessions for him to figure out what the problem was and teach me the exercises I need to do at home, as long as I was good about doing my homework and doing those exercises regularly at home, it started to work out and the pain started to go away…
What was your goal with coming to see us? Did we help you achieve it?
Yes absolutely! So my goal was to go on the ski trip at spring break and ski the mountain without pain and man, I did it! It was awesome! It was really satisfying! I mean, I came in, did the classes, I did the physical therapy work here and then did, I thought you know, enough of the homework that I was supposed to do at home and doing the exercises there. I have to admit driving out to Colorado I still was like a little bit scared, like oh man, what if it’s hard. The first day just went out on the mountain that morning and skied those first few runs and it felt fantastic! I didn’t have the pain in the knee, didn’t have the pain in the hip and I felt a lot stronger than I was expecting to feel. I was really surprised and impressed and thrilled that I was able to do that… [Stephen] Awesome… [Jen] Should I tell the story?… [Stephen] yeah I was about to say that… [Jen] The really cool thing was my physical therapist and Pilates teacher, one of the many amazing Pilates teachers here, also happened to be on vacation skiing the same place that I was with my family. So that morning when I went out to ski and everything was working so well and feeling so great, I was just singing their praises in my head. I was like man, they are awesome, because thanks to them I am able to come out here and do this. At the end of the day we went to pick up our kids from the kids ski school and I ran into Cheryl Dunn and so I was able to tell her right then and there just how incredibly happy I was with the results and how great it felt that morning and how grateful I was to her and Stephen for getting me up to a place where I could do that… [Stephen] And that was the coolest part for us because we were there totally checked out from work… [Jen] Yeah… [Stephen] and yet we get this incredibly positive feedback from all the work that we do, so we loved it. It was just really cool to have that experience right then and there and not have to wait till we got home to hear it, so that was something that was pretty awesome, alright excellent…
Are you just hoping and waiting for your hip or knee pain to go away on its own?
Are you modifying the way you go up and down stairs?
Are you doing things that allow you to AVOID the stairs all together?
Have you been let down by a Physical Therapist or Pilates Instructor in the past?
We can help you if you answered YES to any of the questions above ^^^
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