FOXcast PT: Overcoming A Devastating Nerve Injury While Becoming A Clinician

Peter Rechenberg, PT, DPT: It’s gratifying. Somebody like walking or having the balance to stand up to say go to the bathroom. Those are things that that are daily occurrences that we take for granted sometimes. And are very important for someone’s quality of life. So it’s independence to me. I find a little bit more gratifying to help someone accomplish say ADL is just a gross way to say it when they used to be able to do it and now they can’t do that activity anymore. It’s more gratifying because it’s something the person has to do every single day. I don’t know it just really hit home that that seems important to me.

Welcome to FOXcast Physical Therapy. A podcast for clinicians made by clinicians. It’s brought to you by FOX Rehabilitation. Find out more at FOXRehab.org.

Jimmy McKay, PT, DPT: Ladies and gentleman welcome to FOXcast. I’m your host physical therapist Dr. Jimmy McKay on the program. Peter Rechenberg PT welcome to the program. Peter one of my colleagues it’s FOXRehab.org kind of tipped me off. You’re going to be joining the practice here. Nice rehabilitation not too long right.

Peter Rechenberg, PT, DPT: Yeah that’s right. I will be starting February 25th. I’m looking forward to joining. So I don’t know if Jason told you how I kind of found FOXRehab.org. No. Oh wow. Oh got a story right there.

Jimmy: I want to know it.

Peter: Okay. Okay so I was doing home health care. Big hospital system. You know I really liked it. I like the one on one care. I was working. I like the geriatric population but I was really held back. Your physical therapist yourself. I’m not sure if you ever did home health care but home health care billing Medicare A has a lot of paperwork very cumbersome. And you don’t spend as much time as you like working with people helping them get better which is of course what we all went to school for four million years and took out a million dollars in loans for. And I it was troubling for me. So not really looking for a new job. I just kind of start searching the internet and I’m looking for you know there had to be something out there better that has less of this cumbersome documentation out there and I’m literally just walking through kind of just surfing the web and something pops up called FOX Rehab. Never heard of it before and it’s talking about geriatric house calls. This is interesting I’m just going to click on and it starts talking about all the things Mr. FOX started the whole practice. Oh he wanted to take off all the bureaucracy that goes into a third party and Medicare reimbursements. Really focus on what’s most important patient care. And so I just kind of started Googling and Googling FOX and then I found out they were actually hiring to do physical therapy position in Vernon Hills Illinois. I just sort of interest I just shoot an email to one of the H.R. women Jane. She emails me back. And we get the talking and she goes you know one of our regnional directors is in Illinois doing interviews and it was a short term notice but can you show up at a 8 o’clock tomorrow. And I go Oh sure I guess I just check it out. That’s good. And you know at this point I’m thinking huh. This is kind of interesting how all the stars are aligning here. You know I’m not really looking for a new position. I’m just getting sick of the paperwork and here’s this FOX Rehab thing and the whole thing started out as Dr. Fox figuring out what he doesn’t want to deal with Medicare A and want to put more focus on what’s important patien.t care. And it got my attention. You know that and all of a sudden there’s an interview that pops up. And I had a cancellation on my schedule so I was able to make it out there. Right away I was blown away. I met with Jason and Jeff found out later in the week I had the position offered to me and I was like well you know I but this all seems too good to be true. I actually said that my interview is that all the stars are aligning here. I’m going to have to try it looks like it’s got everything I want out of therapy it’s got the one on one care you get the autonomy to practice by yourself. Everyone seems very motivated and ambitious to do what’s most important why we all went to school for so long and just focus on quality centered patient centered care. And so here we are today. I start in a couple weeks and now I’m on your podcast which is fantastic. So thanks again for having me Jimmy.

Jimmy: The audience is I think we set that up and I I was I know I didn’t know I didn’t know was that cool story. So and we did we just started hiring in Illinois not I mean you must be one of the first hires we’re getting out there we’re just moving into that state.

Peter: Yeah actually I am. It’s fantastic. I can’t believe something like this happened to me you never think something like this a dream comes true but I guess the universe all of a sudden throws me an easy pitch so all the stars are aligning and yes to everyone listening in this was not rehearsed this is all real it all really happened.

Jimmy: Well that’s great. Just hearing it in your voice I’m glad that I’m glad you tripped over us. I’m glad it was a happy accident if you just kind of Google it and again you said you weren’t necessarily looking for a position that you wanted to do that thing you wanted to do what we all want to do is physical therapist which has helped people. I’m glad you’re able to do it with this practice and exactly what he said. Dr. Fox saw that 20 years ago this year and said there’s got to be a better way. And then you get that you get to benefit and even better your clients get the benefit in Illinois now. Absolutely. Well the reason we actually connected is you mentioned Jason a couple times is that one of the physical therapists out in Illinois trying to find some other clinicians out there. He talked to you on your interview and said hey he kind of tipped me off. He said Check Check this guy out. Check out Peter’s story in an article on you and I did a little reading and your story was really really interesting in terms of your journey through physical therapy before you came to the profession. Talk a little bit about that. Where do you work your journey to a PT start?

Peter: To help benefit the audience. I might just kind of tell the end and then I’ll tell them the whole story is just so they know where I’m coming from. I got in a bad injury when I was 16 and I made it to therapy school and that’s how I became a therapist. There’s the 10 second version but I guess yeah I got a little longer. Yeah yeah yeah. When I was a teenager I went on a fun ATV or four wheeling trip with my dad and the two best friends we were for really and having the time of our lives the trails turned and I didn’t notice it turned and I had a big tree head on. What ended up happening was it was called a great to axonotomesis of right axillary nerve faster. After having to go through multiple doctors in Chicago and eventually finding their way to the Mayo Clinic. So basically my right axillary nerve was not functioning. There was never enough regrowth to have a functioning right deltoid anymore. So I went through therapy as a teenager four or five months just seeing its natural recovery in the natural history peripheral nerve disease process would fix itself and it didn’t. And you know after four or five months you’re 15 or 16 things aren’t getting better. You start to kind of get depressed because you’re like what what the heck is going on here. You know like I can’t even lift my arm up to put deodorant on. This stinks. You can’t I can’t play sports anymore. I was always kind of an athlete growing up. So I you know I’m telling this to my dad I go dad you know. There’s gotta be something out there. He’s like Okay Pete, let’s go take you to Mayo Clinic it’s the best of the best. Let’s just see what those doctors out there have to say. So go out there we met with a team of three neurosurgeons and they eventually said OK well you know you tried conservative management we got data on yes and emojis and we decided to go through with what’s called the right axillary nerve transfer. And I had that surgery in 2007 and then the physician took a branch of my right radial nerve and kind of hooked it back up to the distal remnants of my right axillary nerve and I went through then therapy and recovery you know as nerves take a long time to recover. One to three millimeters per day. And then about four to six months after my surgery the nerve starts to reinnervate the deltoid and I go back from a six month follow up. We have the EMG and then the guy goes You know it’s firing again congratulations to you and get your life back. I remember looking at my dad and just kind of neither of us want to admit that we cried but there was little tears that ran down because we’re got a second chance at that kind of really lit a fire underneath me and I gave it all in physical therapy I gave everything to I said you know this isn’t this is muscles reinnervating it’s time to learn to fire it again and so I tried very hard. I’ve had a fantastic successful recovery. One of the best ones is documented or for that doctors operation he’s done. My success story when I was graduating therapy finally after over a year. I know you know this is really interesting. I look at my therapist and say his name was Mike. He’s listening. He goes Oh you don’t want to look into this as a profession. I said OK. He goes well you’re gonna be really smart because it’s hard to get in. I go Well I guess I guess I’ll try. And I gave it my best and I knew after I kind of overcame that that injury that kind of said well I would like to do this for other people. Whether it’s overcoming a nerve injury or an ACL injury or what is most interesting to me is helping people ambulate normally or transferred to the optimal capability. Just to do something that you could do before due to an injury that really interest me and kind of gets me going in the morning. So that turned out to be the career for me and I went to school you know for undergrad and I got into PT school. I stayed at Central Michigan. Now I’m a practicing PT. You know I couldn’t say this has just been completely blessed my whole life. I’ve had a great support family my my mom and my dad or helped me through even the worst times when I was a sad depressed teenager and now I couldn’t be happier to be in the shoes of a therapist helping other people overcome injuries. It’s really kind of an interesting story. It’s nice to be able to to have gone through that because I think it helps me pick up on some things. That other therapists miss some body language or some signs of you know is this person depressed or something that someone else may not pick up on. I think I get a chance to pick up on that. So very humbling to go through that whole therapy and recovery process and I couldn’t be happier with my career and where I’m at now in life.

Jimmy: What lessons did you learn as a patient. Any you can think of right now that really really helped you put into practice with a human being?

Peter: Yeah. You know one of the biggest things is I mean no I’ve had multiple therapists over my recovery process I’ve been to multiple clinics and when people have a question when someone says Oh this hurts. Why does it hurt. And I was always turned off when I would get an answer that would say well does it hurt now. No don’t worry about it or if it hurts don’t do it anymore. And I always thought I’d go you know what. Why am I paying you to the one therapist that kind of got me into this career was able to explain everything to me and I took that and I put that right in the clinical practice whenever someone has a question I try to stay the extra three or four minutes in the office or in the client’s house and answer the question because they want to know what’s happening to them. Well why does it hurt. There’s probably a reason for it. You might be able to do a couple two or three differential MSK tests to figure out why there’s a person having pain and answer the question. And just to know the cause of this person’s pain it puts the person at ease it puts the patient you’re working with at ease because there’s a reason for why they’re suffering and then hopefully there’s something you can do about it.

Jimmy: A little bit goes a long way in that that’s just build net therapeutic alliance and helping that person you know quite possibly all along a long road to recovery make that road a little bit better.

Peter: Absolutely.

Jimmy: That’s it that’s an amazing story Peter. No matter how many times I read about these things I just hearing them in react personally accounts amazing surgeries and as medicine and science continues to progress. It still blows me away when you talk about a surgery like that it is still no matter how many times I hear about it it’s still amazing.

Peter: Absolutely. You know it would it would. Couldn’t agree more. Medicine is just think of that there’s actually a surgery for this type of injury. You go holy cow it exists. That’s amazing.

Jimmy: Actually hearing you say you’re able to to be a therapist now and that might not have been the case. Have you gone through that now what kind of therapist you’re going to be because you went through something like that. It’s great.

Peter: I don’t have 100 percent of my deltoid but I have about 60 percent functioning and I’m able to do I’m able to function as a therapist. I can do everything I want. I can’t throw a fastball. So there goes my chance of being a professional baseball player. The Cubs aren’t going to pick me up. It’s very gratifying and humbling to be where I’m at right now.

Jimmy: Peter we have a tradition on the show it’s called your FOXtale. Why did you decide to work with the patient population that you did? Coming from such an athletic background a lot of times people gravitate towards sports but love the here with us and coming to work with the practice at FOX Rehabilitation. Why do you decide to work with these individuals?

Peter: Absolutely. Great question. And I found this that everybody that works with the geriatric population and loves doing so has a very similar background. I always found that interesting. No one thought that they would or at least the people I’ve interviewed this focus thought that they would love working with a geriatric or older population. They always thought exactly what I thought I wanted to do is force rehab or orthopedic manual adjustments stuff like that. But I got into it and it gets gratifying of course all therapy is gratifying something like just walking or having the balance to stand up to say go to the bathroom. Those are things that that are daily occurrences that we take for granted sometimes and are very important for someone’s quality of life or someone’s independence. To me I find a little bit more grant fine to help someone accomplish say 80 hours. It’s just a gross way to say it when they used to be able to do it and now they can’t do that activity anymore. It is more gratifying because it’s something the person has to do every single day. I don’t know it just really hit home that that seems important to me and I’ve always been able to build a good rapport with older people and you know I like to say that that’s the greatest generation in the world. And they’re all go getters. Generally if I want to walk with somebody there they would love to go walking and they’re all hard workers and they appreciate all of the work and effort you’re you’re trying to get the person better. Well I think those two things combined that most people are motivated to get better in the older population. And you’re helping someone overcome a problem that affects them daily. That’s an important task and to be able to help someone do it again. I don’t know it gets me going it’s exciting. And that’s the population I love to work with. Believe it or not.

Jimmy: Glad you found your way here with us at FOX Rehabilitation. Can’t wait to talk to you again as your career progresses.

Peter: Oh fantastic.

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