My Story

I started my career at an outpatient physical therapy clinic treating general orthopedic issues and I was really enjoying what I was doing.  A few years in, I was nudged into treating pelvic health. Honestly, I was very hesitant at first.  In the span of the 3 years at PT school, we only talked about the pelvic floor for one day and I certainly did not walk away that day with confidence or clarity on how I could really help these patients.  

I started treating patients with incontinence issues and the more I learned and the more I saw the impact on patients’ lives, pushed me all in. It was the most amazing thing to watch and a huge quality of life improvement. I had patients that were afraid to leave the house not even going to the grocery store or family events, that then were able to go anywhere they wanted because their bladder or bowels were not holding them back any longer. They were in control of their lives again. 

I also started to have children myself and going through very different birthing experiences from a c-section, a vaginal birth to unmedicated births, I saw firsthand what the body goes through. I also saw the lack of postpartum care for women and that the focus shifts primarily to the baby. There are so many changes that happen to the body during pregnancy, at birthing time and postpartum.

I was then strongly encouraged to start seeing patients for pelvic pain and I knew I needed more knowledge. I have always said that I need to be confident about what I know and what I don’t know so that I can do my best for the patient. I also felt very strongly that I wanted to be able to educate my patients about what was going on with their body so that they understood and that it made sense in their brain how we were going to make changes. 

 So, I took an introductory pelvic floor course from Friday to Sunday and hit the ground running on Monday…

…Monday morning, I was pretty much told great now you are going to take over our pelvic floor program.  To say it became a bit overwhelming quick is an understatement.  I learned a lot at that course, but it couldn’t prepare me for treating a whole new population of patients right away.  Unfortunately, this is very common, and practitioners just get tossed into the mix right away.

I was pushed into seeing so many different diagnoses. I was excited and overwhelmed in the same moment. I also felt very unsupported, as pelvic floor PT is really an umbrella term for all the different conditions that you start to see.  And as much as the patient may say that they are coming in to work on stress incontinence, the more questions that you ask, you uncover that they are struggling with pelvic pain and constipation too. Meaning you very quickly need to be able to treat everything after only taking just one class, what a whirlwind it can be!

I did my research, took more classes as I was able while working full time, growing my family and then opening up my clinic in 2015 with my husband. I found it to be important that I slowly took each class because it is such an information overload in those 2-3 full days that you leave being absolutely pumped, ready to apply these principles AND completely overwhelmed of where to start in the first place. I also would end up with a million questions after the course because that is when you start using the information, but not the support system that I needed to be able to work through everything. 

It takes time to integrate all this knowledge into clinical practice because there was so much to sift through. But I also saw that there was so much research needed in between taking classes because you rarely see a patient for just one pelvic floor condition. I spent a lot of time posting on pelvic floor groups and reaching out to friends who are also treating the pelvic floor so that I could put the pieces together while treating these patients. 

Fast forward many courses, patients and PT’s I’ve trained in my own clinic later and My Pelvic Mentor is born.  The biggest thing I would change in doing it all over would be to find someone to help guide me along the way.  As more and more businesses owners and friends asked me to help train PT’s new to treating the pelvic floor, I have doubled down on my passion for Pelvic Floor Therapy.  Now its time to help you along your own journey in this amazing career you are starting.