Adapting To COVID-19

Well,  it has been more than a month since we decided to stop seeing patients in our office due to the fear of spreading Coronavirus (COVID-19).  I cannot begin to explain how proud I am of what we have been able to accomplish as a team through our telehealth and other virtual efforts these last 4 weeks.  We have not only been able to make sure our patients continue to make strides towards their goals but we have also been able to help new patients who didn’t want to risk a trip out of the house.  We have also launched our Virtual Running School! We had an amazing first session and are about to get started on a second session!  

As I look at all of this and think about how we have adapted, I can’t help but wonder what the future will hold, and how we will need to continue to adapt. I know as we watch the news, read the paper and talk with family and friends this can be a very scary and uncertain thing.  Well today, I’d like to tell you that we should all take comfort in knowing that we were actually made for this.

   I know what you are thinking, “This guy is nuts!”.  Hold on and hear me out.  Being in the physical therapy and fitness field, I am going to present this situation through that lens. What happens when a patient comes into the clinic who is getting knee pain when they run?  We watch them run, we put them through some tests and look for the “weak” point.  We don’t have that person avoid the weak point, in fact we do the opposite; we expose it and we target it, all in an effort to get their body to adapt.  Our bodies are amazing at this. If we gradually expose them to a stress or a trigger, they will eventually adapt to those stimuli by growing stronger and becoming more resilient.

So we need to take comfort in knowing that this situation we are all in is one big stress and we are going to learn from it and adapt to it.  In the short term, that adaptation may seem a little scary, like when you run a new distance for the first time, or lift more weight than you thought possible. But just like in those scenarios, we will all get through this and come out stronger on the other side.  I am confident in this because we see it all day, every day.

How is this going to work?  Well, we are going to lean on everyone around us, friends, family, community, and together we will help push each other to become stronger.  This starts now, when we are home with only our immediate family.  For me, my kids are keeping me on my toes and helping me see the joy in all the little things that normally may pass by in a day without a notice.  Hayden has been giving our whole family art lessons, that will go down as classic YouTube content one day.  Madison has set the world record for how many times one toddler can watch the same episode of Daniel Tiger. Stacey is showing me that while I thought I juggled a lot in a day, watching her seamlessly transition from short order cook, to teacher, to artist, to whatever keeps Madison from interrupting my next telehealth visit, I really have it pretty easy.  As a team we are doing our best to make this a time the kids will look back on fondly and remember all the great things we did.  

As we come out and emerge back into the community, I know these things will make me better and stronger. Because of that I will be able to help others, lift them up, and in turn they will all be able to do the same for me, because we are all in this together!   We are all going to adapt, and grow stronger, because that’s all our bodies know how to do.  Our bodies see stress and grow stronger to adapt to it.  So take comfort knowing that while all of this might seem like too much to handle right now, in the end we are going to be better for it.  I don’t know how, no one really does, but I have a feeling we will, because in the end this is human nature.

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