Treatment of any kind will have its attendant problems. In physiotherapy it is pain of varying degrees and resistance of the affected portion to comply with Physio’s instructions. ‘Raise your leg by 30 degrees in supine position and twist it, count ten.’ First it took me two sessions to guess how high or low is 30 degrees. ‘Rest on your shoulder, raise your leg and kick backwards forcefully – ten times, each leg’. ‘In the same posture raise and rotate your leg clockwise and anticlockwise twenty times. Each item, mind you, under his eagle eyes – you can’t get away with a quick job of or reduce intensity. Half a dozen exercises in standing position similarly. He would just count One, Two, Three – in the slowest motion. At one point I felt like asking if ever as a child he attempted to count numbers faster.
Just 30 years old, Dr Satish Kumar did his Masters in Physiotherapy. He missed getting into MBBS by a whisker. The next option was Dentistry. Not his cup of tea. So, he chose Physiotherapy. Now he is proud he has knowledge of all parts of human body and is able to bring the affected portion back to normal or near normal. His aim while attending to a patient is that he should be the last physio to treat him/her to recovery. The patient should not have to go to anyone else, that is. Worthy objective.
Satish has been running his clinic for five years in the turning next to our SLV restaurant. He has four or five qualified staff to assist him. An SFV resident, happy with Satish’s treatment, recommended him to me. Yes, other than getting cases through professional referrals, he gets most of his clients through word of mouth, he said, as he unleashed 12 or 15 residents whom he had treated and is treating in our complex. I could place about 9 or 10 of them. He is not the one to rest on his laurels. He plans to do PhD starting from next year. All the best.
His wife is a paediatric Physiotherapist. But since a year or two she is enjoying the status of a full-time homemaker.
“This is okay Uncle, but how and when did you collect all this info?’ you might wonder. Well, during the 20-minute interferential treatment (medium electrical current treatment to reduce inflammation and increase blood circulation), he would sit on a chair and update his incoming messages in mobile as I put up with the tickling sensation that the electrical vibration creates.
It turned out we both are extroverts. We could observe this 20-minute silence for not more than two days. Thus began a casual conversation on the third day: ‘so what breakfast did you have today?’ Or, ‘any urgent hospital visit you made yesterday following an operation?” And the like. His tie up with a few orthopaedic surgeons renders him make a visit or two to hospital for the first physiotherapy soon after surgery. The rest of the time he is in his clinic.
“Sir, now, with today’s treatment the course is over. You can and you will manage yourself hereafter. Everything is in your hands,” he reassured me as he stuffed his instruments into his backpack.
‘Thank you very much Satish. Any special instructions?’ I asked him as he approached the door. “Not exactly. Maybe you could ask Aunty to oversee as you do the exercises.
‘My worst fear might come true, I said to myself. Like a school teacher to her student, chances are the lady of the house will assert, “No, not that way; do it this way, and repeat it ten times.”
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