You are the single most qualified person to consult with regarding the sensation of pain that you feel in your body, yet most health care practitioners hardly hear a word you say. They jump right into what they believe is going wrong with your body because they are the "expert." Too often as a patient it is impossible to get a word out and come to any legitimate understanding of why you are in pain because the explanation is only loosely related to what you are actually experiencing. The average time before a doctor interrupts their patient is 8-15 seconds. That is incredible. The only person in the room experiencing the issue at hand is allotted 8 seconds to explain what they are feeling and why they believe it is occurring.
As an issue arises the same 3 stage process of pain occurs.
Stage 1) Ignore it
This is the most important stage of any issue, physical health, work related, relationship based or life based. An issue arises and at first it's not overwhelming, so we set it to the side and continue on. The shower starts to look a shade yellow, the shoulder starts getting sore, the back gets achy, the knees start feeling strained, your significant other acts cold, you don't receive an expected return email, your boss doesn't acknowledge the above and beyond work you did this month, you get the idea. Nothing is done about it because nothing has to be done. This issue is only a little bothersome at first so we sit back and let the water get hot.
2) Frustration
Next up is the frustrated stage. For many people this stage comes 2nd and 4th, but always comes 2nd. We let the shower get disgusting, that email goes without response for too long and now our work is going to be late. Your back hurts at the most random times and is starting to limit what you can do. Your shoulder is losing its strength and you feel like you are losing your ability to do the only thing that doesn't feel like work. It's bullshit that you should have to deal with this but you don't know what needs to be done, so this stage becomes stage 3 rather quickly.
3) Hopelessness
Your back has been like this forever. Your shoulder never feels right. The knees always make that noise. You don't squat below 90. All of these descriptions have one thing in common. They speak in absolutes. Your activities begin matching your mindset and slowly the things that you love to do become a pain (literally) and you are either too stubborn to give them up or too busy to do anything about it. Now the quality of your life has truly been affected. Before this, the pain was just a part of life. Without this pain you are not even sure what life is like. Its been there forever. Forever might be 5 years, it might be 15. It might even be 6 months depending on how in your face the pain really is.
If you are lucky, you hit stage 4. Frustration round 2. If you are lucky to hit this stage then you know the strict increase in uncertainty that comes with it. You want to do something, but you do not know what to do. There are a ton of options and competing interests out there, only a fraction that you are even aware of. When in pain, most individuals put their trust in an MD (medical doctor) they seek out for advice. This is often the best course of action. MD's are experienced at diagnosing causation of pain and will refer you for the correct course of action. This is assuming that the MD has no competing interest. If that MD owns a PT or chiropractor practice or has stake in one, then a competing interest may impact the quality of care that you receive. For instance, most physician owned practices are high volume (3-4 patients per hour with one physical therapist) and are billed under the physicians license, making the bills up to 3 times what a privately owned practice would charge (even if the patient spends all of their time with a doctor one-on-one). The curtain that has been placed in front of our health care services needs to be taken down, but it is currently suspended by insurance companies. The insurance company claims to pay for health care services, but not if you have a deductible. Not if you have a co-insurance, and certainly not if you want to choose the best option. Why? Because the best option does not want to be valued the same as the worst option, but there are so many options that your insurance company could never evaluate all of them and determine adequate reimbursement rates.
So here you are, hopeless or frustrated, under-informed or overwhelmed, with a shoulder, back hip, or knee that is holding you back. That is where physical medicine companies like Human Function and Performance step in. We pull back the curtain on the broken system of health care because we are like you. We want answers, we want results, and we want to know what the heck is going on. We spend an hour with patients at every treatment. Why? Because we need time to understand. We see patients on a one-doctor, one-patient basis. Why? Because we have the necessary expertise to provide personalized, appropriate, necessary treatment to get people better faster. We are affordable. Why? Because the best option needs to be accessible if it is to truly be the best option. We typically see people once a week because our treatment method is designed to give you back control over your pain and more importantly control over your life.
We have found at HFAP that the people who get the best results, are also the most informed. That is why we tailor our service to those who want to know. First we understand why you are coming in, then we help you to understand what it takes for you to not only stop coming, but to be able to perform maintenance on yourself in the future should another issue arise. Treatment often implies that something is done to you, however, a majority of the treatments we utilize to reduce tension and stress on the body are easily recreated at home. This does not decrease the effectiveness of the treatment. This allows you the opportunity to spend more time at home with your family and less time in the clinic. Affordability is a distinct characteristic of HFAP and we make it our mission to be as transparent as possible with expectations of timeline for results and what needs to be exchanged for those results (money, time and effort).