The Therapist

Ever since I was a little child my grandmother has always reinforced my health. As she says me and my brothers have a “double whammy” of disease. We have diabetes and high blood pressure on my fathers side and heart disease on my mothers side. When I was a small child I always went with my mothers mom to Guntersville so she could take care of her brother. By the time I was 8 I had almost lost my uncle to heart attacks maybe twelve times. My grandmother always said to him “you better eat right Cat before you end up six feet under.” (Cat is my uncles nickname by the way ). When I was in the second grade I lost my great grandmother to a massive heart attack. One day I went to my doctor for a routine check up and she sent me to a cardiologist for a ultrasound on my heart where they found a hole in my heart. He also discovered a heart murmur which means my heart skips beats at random.

When I was about 10 my dad had developed type 2 diabetes. For the first couple of months my dad was forced to change his diet and exercise habits. I felt like I had to take care of him because in my mind my dad was really old but in reality he was just 40. My dad told me that it was hard to completely change his diet all of a sudden ,and that he wishes he knew that by just eating right he could've prevented it. My dad went 10 years without using insulin just by diet and exercise. My dad is 50 years old and is just now having to use the insulin 3 times a week depending on his blood sugar. My aunt who is my dads sister has had diabetes for 26 years.She is completely insulin dependent. My grandmother and great grandmother also had diabetes. My dad says that it is almost impossible that I would not get it as I get older. In my head I just want to keep my health up and completely avoid that demon.

When I was 10 I started playing basketball and that was the year I fell in love with the game. I played all throughout middle school and up until my 11th grade year. In the 10th grade I started varsity and that’s when things started going wrong. In one of our home games we were playing in a area game so it was an important game. I was going up for a lay up and got fouled coming down and I twisted my knee really bad. I went to the TOC (The Orthopaedic Center) doctor and he told me I could do therapy or just get a brace and be careful. I decided to just get the brace,WRONG! The next week in practice my other knee popped out of place. So now I had two Knee braces and if that wasn’t enough my back was starting to act up. In about the middle of the season one day during a game my back was really acting crazy, the next day in practice I strained my back. I went back to the TOC doctor where he sent me to physical therapy 4 times a week for 8 weeks. To say the least, I spent a lot of time with my therapist. We would talk about his job and why he choose it and over the course of the 8 weeks I decided this was what I wanted to do with my life.