The Closer

It's started to happen again, and I'm not sorry. When I got the email from my supervisor asking me to take over a patient who had requested another therapist due to a personality clash, I smiled and adjusted my Ray Bans. "Yeah, baby. This is why they call me...The Closer." Okay, I really adjusted my new Danish frames with the progressive lenses, but just play along. This is not the first time I have been called in on a "difficult" patient, and sooner or later, it happens everywhere I go. I find that these patients are usually simply in a lot of pain, physically, mentally and emotionally. Many of my patients have lost their feet, or their legs. At the very least, they have lost the ability to control them, and everything about their life and how they thought it would turn out has changed forever. I don't know about you, but that would sure put some sandpaper up my ass.

It's a not very well-kept secret that physical therapists develop bonds and relationships with their patients. We have to, or else it just doesn't work. Part of my job is to get people to drop their act, their bravado, and do things they are damn scared to do, like walk with no legs. We are all up in their business for weeks, often months. I come in to people's lives when they are at their lowest, and friends, it ain't pretty. There is nausea, vomiting, depression, anger, anger, and often, a little side dish of anger. It's a point of minor perversity that I consider it an honor, a privilege and a calling to work with these people. I'm sort of a tour guide through hell; I bring the map. "Well look at that. God brought you a little white girl. Now what SHE gonna do?" I can see it on their faces, and often they say it right out loud. "Dude, you and me gonna walk. I ain't dropped one yet, and I'm not starting with you. So go on get READY."

This week I am discharging three patients who walked through hell these past months, with me right by their side, calling out the terrain. I have never been prouder. One of these fine Brothaz today told me that he had thought to bring me a yellow rose on discharge day, but had thought of it too late, and would I accept the sentiment, a hug and sincere thanks? I did. Another patient simply wanted discharge day to be his chance to show off to his therapist, and he had a whole routine planned. Tomorrow I will discharge a third very special Brother, a bilateral amputee who now stands, and walks proudly on his new prostheses. These men were in wheelchairs, in power chairs, and now they walk. I live for that moment, that moment when they can walk away from me.

My patients often tell me, "I really hate to see you go." "I know, but you can do it without me now", I tell them. I am routinely amazed and touched by my patients, and how much they want to show off for me on the last day. They want to hold doors for me, and proudly announce "Ladies First" and with a flourish, "After you." These moments are so poignant, because now they can do these things again, they can be strong again, they are no longer "disabled" but "abled", and it means the world to them. And to me.