Yesterday, a family friend came home. As always during any functions/meets, I became nervous that any minute someone is going to ask for my advice soon enough regarding some ache/pain. I usually dread such conversations because rarely do we interact with people with no work on our minds and as our profession has no visible commodity, it is usually easy for people to jump right in with their complaints as soon as they see a physiotherapist.

As expected, I soon got a patient on my day off. Though a little disappointed to be working on my day off, I assessed the lady for whom I have a deep respect for since I was child. I assessed, treated, taught her exercises and lo behold! the lady who was limping till about 15 minutes earlier was soon walking straight and feeling lighter than she had felt in about 8 years. No magic here, just gross mismanagement of her muscular symptoms by a string of general physicians and orthopedics who had told her to avoid bending her knee and gave her a lot of medications.

The tears streamed down her face as she tried walking around in my house and she joined her hands as if in prayer. The tears followed from my eyes since I felt so grateful that I could make any sort of lasting change in anyone’s life in 20 minutes. The burnout, the feeling of deserving a day off did not matter at that time as I realized that for someone, those 20 minutes could be one of the most important 20 minutes they have lived in years.

Of course, I am all for having respect for medico’s time off and how our generalized population has no boundary whatsoever when it comes to taking valuable time/advice out of a physiotherapist. But such moments reinforce my love for my profession and I remember why I started this all.