Physical Therapy and the News
I don't know about anyone else but I can't read medical news with an unbiased outlook. A few days ago "Yahoo!" posted an article about a man who'd awakened from a month-long coma. The first thought that entered my mind was concern about why he wasn't wearing a helmet. He'd obviously had a hemicraniectomy so needed to be wearing a helmet. My next thought was to disregard the entire story since the coma was medically induced and therefore not a true coma.
I drive people crazy with this. I usually don't say anything aloud unless someone asks me about it. There are numerous movies I can't watch because I'll be so distracted by the medical inaccuracies, I won't pay attention to the movie itself. The same is true of TV shows, news feeds, magazines and the like. I spent half of "Forest Gump" trying to figure out how they were able to make the bilateral knee amputee so realistic.
Several years ago, I worked in a department that watched a soap opera at lunch. Any time one of the characters was in the hospital, we roared with laughter. I don't know which was funnier -- the butchered medical conditions, nonexistent recoveries or lack of residual deficits except for amnesia from the most devastating of head injuries. Entire conversations occurred with a trach in place. Once there was an oxygen tube that ended in mid-air.
But one thing annoys me more than anything else. Where is the mention of physical therapy? The story about the coma man mentioned him taking his first steps but said nothing about the physical therapist who helped him. I seriously doubt the man got out of bed by himself or that the nurses took it upon themselves to help him. For every story about someone overcoming a devastating injury, there is probably a PT pushing that person along who never gets mentioned.
My friends either humor me or ignore me. They don't care whether or not the man has a helmet. Nor do they care that a C-something quadriplegic can't use his hands. They have no concept of what I do or why I get annoyed that PTs are the forgotten discipline in the news.