By Harry Minium
I'd love to be able to tell you that I was playing rugby, running the end zone steps at S.B. Ballard Stadium or pulling a child out of the way of a speeding car when I fell and tore my bicep muscle last year.
Would love to but can't.
Truthfully, I was starting to climb down from my attic when I slipped, hit the attic ladder and then the floor. My left arm got caught between steps and hyper extended.
Yep, I was a total klutz.
I wasn't in pain, but the copious amounts of blood and the curious location of my bicep muscle caused me to scream out loud for my wife, Ellen.
The bicep muscle, normally centered between your elbow and shoulder, drifted almost all the way to my shoulder.
"I wonder if they can fix that?" I remember asking rhetorically about the bicep as Ellen bandaged the gash in my arm.
"They" turned out to be "Team Monarch," as orthopedic surgeon Bradley T. Butkovich likes to call his relationship with Old Dominion University's Monarch Physical Therapy.
Butkovich is the orthopedic surgeon for ODU's athletic teams – most recently he did ACL surgery on men's basketball player Jason Wade and women's basketball player Maggie Robinson. I met him during the 2019 Conference USA basketball tournament but didn't know him well enough to let him cut on me.
He's a big guy – by that I mean you wouldn't want to mess with him – who played football at the University of Richmond and who more recently has played a huge role in the planning for ODU to bring athletes back to campus during the pandemic.
I texted then ODU football coach Bobby Wilder asking for a recommendation and he replied that Dr. Brad, as I now call him, was the best in the business.
He may be the most considerate. The day after my mishap, he drove from his Virginia Beach home to the Atlantic Orthopedic office near Norfolk's DePaul Hospital wearing shorts and an ODU shirt. He came in on his day off, just hours before his daughter was to graduate from Cox High, just to see me.
That gesture told me a lot about Dr. Brad.
The surgery, which included Dr. Brad drilling through some bone and pushing the tendon through, took about an hour. Two weeks later, he sent me to the ODU's Monarch Physical Therapy for rehabilitation, which would take about four months.
I'm not a physical therapist but am married to a former physical therapist assistant, and Ellen long ago taught me what to look for in a good PT.
Someone who gives you time and attention, one-on-one care and hands-on-treatment. Someone with a good ear for listening, who gives you guidance on exercises to do at home and is friendly but not afraid to push you.
I was treated by perhaps a dozen people in all at Monarch PT and everyone had those characteristics. And not all the care came directly from physical therapists.
ODU has an outstanding program in physical therapy – it accepts only about 40 students per year -- and most students spend some time at Monarch PT or working with patients from the clinic, honing their craft on patients under the watchful eyes of a physical therapist.
Mabel Sisk was the first student to work on me and like so many of the good people I met there, she was drawn to physical therapy after becoming dissatisfied with her career.
A suburban Richmond native, Sisk was a chef at a gourmet restaurant in Portland, Oregon – she graduated from the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu chef school – before she returned to Virginia in search of something more fulfilling.
"Cooking was fun and it gave me a lot of small pleasures," she said.
Ryan Hunt and Mabel Sisk
"But there's no human connection in it. You are by yourself and with your co-workers and they're also busy. I missed having a connection with the people I was serving."
She wanted to get into the medical field, in part because she is gifted in math and science and has an exercise science degree from VCU. She also wanted to get out of the restaurant business – even in good times, eateries often shut down with little notice – and get into a more stable career.
"Out of all the professions I considered, this is the one where you get to know people," she said. "I like to know what their work is like, and any use any of the skills we have that can enhance their lives."
It's not only competitive to get into ODU's PT school, it's challenging to graduate. You need a four-year degree to be admitted, including a ton of science courses. To become a PT, you take three more years of graduate classes totaling 116 credits.
At the end, you have earned a doctorate. Mabel Sisk will become Dr. Sisk in May.
Dr. Mira Mariano, a clinical assistant professor in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences, said that along with strong medical skills, you also need a kind and caring personality and interpersonal skills to enable patients to overcome obstacles in their rehab and to accomplish goals that at times may seem impossible.
"Mabel has worked very hard and has become a natural," she said. "She listens to patients, understands what they're going through and is always upbeat. She has so much energy."
After several months, Mabel knew my life story and I knew a lot of hers as well.
Ryan Hunt, a Norfolk native, is the physical therapist I most often worked with, along with Mabel. His back story is also interesting.
Ryan is a graduate of Catholic High in Virginia Beach who majored in music and business at ODU. I refer to him as the "Piano Man," given the piano was his instrument of choice.
He was floundering on what to do with his life when he got injured and had to have physical therapy.
"It was the first time I ever had PT," he said. "As I got treatment, I began to think, 'this is what I want to do.' The people were so nice to me. You could see this is a profession where you really get to help people.
"It just felt right."
He had worked five years as a pharmacy tech before enrolling in PT school, so he had a leg up. And he learned his craft well.
Every time he moved my arm, he explained what he was doing and why. He was focused and at times a bit of a worry-wort, something I liked to tease him about.
But he convinced me to go slow on rehab and because he did, there were no setbacks. He could sense I was in a hurry to get back into the weight room.
Ryan and Mabel put me through some pain stretching my arm. That comes with the territory at times when you're in PT but they did so with care.
Care there, by the way, isn't limited to ODU students and staff – Monarch PT also serves the general public.
It is ably run by Dr. Lisa Koperna, a lecturer with the School of Rehabilitation Sciences, who opened Monarch PT in 2014 and not only supervises the clinic, but also works with patients.
The Monarch PT staff toils in cramped quarters in the Peri Lab building on east side of ODU's campus, but that should change in the near future.
ODU has plans to build an $74.9 million Health Sciences Building that will house Monarch PT, the physical therapy and athletic training programs, and the new Doctor of Occupational Therapy program that will begin in a couple of years.
Design for the new facility is nearly done. It will be constructed just to the south of the south parking deck at Chartway Arena.
The new space will numerous ODU medical programs to accommodate more patients and offer more treatment options.
Monarch PT did pretty well even in Peri Lab. My arm isn't quite as good as new but is as close to 100 percent as you could expect after a serious accident. I'm back in the weight room and for that, I owe everyone at Monarch PT a thank you.
Dr. Bradley T. Butkovich
Obviously, I owe the same to Dr. Brad, who I've gotten to know pretty well. We roomed together last football season for a game at Florida International and he grabbed football head trainer Justin Walker, assistant athletic trainer Angela Moening and his roommate and took us out for dinner on the main drag in South Beach in Miami Beach.
He paid for dinner. He said it was his way of saying thanks to Walker and Moening and a nice way to blow off some steam for all of us during a frustrating football season.
Dr. Brad spent years as the only orthopedic surgeon on the Eastern Shore, something that takes a lot of compassion. "I'd do house calls up there and the bathrooms had dirt floors," he said. "There is still so much poverty there."
He came to Atlantic Orthopedic in 2012 and has been with ODU almost as long. He travels with the football team and is at every home football, men's and women's basketball, field hockey and lacrosse game.
"Over the years I've ended up taking care of more athletes from other teams than athletes at ODU," he said. "That's just a courtesy that the home team provides."
He's a UR grad, and still proud of his Spiders, but he bleeds ODU blue.
"ODU is a family," he said. "It doesn't matter where you are or what part of ODU you're involved in, everybody helps everyone else out.
"It may be because ODU is a young school without a lot of established hierarchies. Everyone has had to work together. Everyone here is unselfish and dedicated to helping everyone else."
Including the fine people at Monarch PT.
Contact Minium: @hminium.odu.edu
Monarch Physical Therapy is located at 1015 West 47th Street on the east side of ODU's campus. For information on getting treatment, call 757-683-7041.
Minium: When I Ruptured my Bicep Tendon Falling Down Some Stairs , I Was Healed by "Team Monarch"
