Jeannie Talks About First Health PT
[Noah Hyman] Below we have a transcription (with small edits for clarification) of an interview with Jeannie Gaffigan.
My name is Jeanie. I am the mother of five kids in New York City. And, during the early days of the Pandemic, like many other people, I was completely focused on trying to homeschool my kids, Trying to check out how to exist in this new normal that we were living in. And I really stopped paying attention to my own health and my own fitness as I tried to take care of everyone else. My own health and fitness suffered.
Since I was so sort of out of shape, when we got to summer and started to try to be active, I wound up slipping three discs in my back. I went to the doctor who prescribed me physical therapy. And at that point, I had the pleasure of working with the greatest physical therapist, Noah Hyman.
Noah is incredibly knowledgeable about what was going on with me. He worked very closely with my doctor to figure out how to get my body back into the position that it needed to be and then sustain that through my day in my normal activities. When I first started working with Noah, I could barely walk up the stairs. And now, about a year later, I am very fit. People ask me if I’ve been working out. It just came from doing these very precise exercises that Noah introduced into my life that I can do. Even if I’m, waiting for water to boil, I can constantly focus on these techniques to keep my body aligned in the proper way.
One of the other things that I enjoy about working with Noah is that he keeps me motivated and is well aware of what my capacity is. He doesn’t let me slack off, but he also doesn’t push me too far. And sometimes when I want to push myself too far, I say, “Okay, let me just do a couple more of these.” He’s like, “Back off on that because if you had a little bit of pain, that’s your signal.” He’s very communicative. Also, he’s very collaborative with my doctor. He checks in with her. He checks in with me when we start a session. He asks me, “What’s going on? How was my week?” He doesn’t just jump into it like it’s a job that he has to get over with.
He communicates very well with me. He’s very funny. He recognizes what’s going on in my life. He hears it; he changes his technique based on if I’m feeling more stiff. He’s very encouraging. He brings out my resilience when I have a setback. And I had a setback. I was doing really well. And then one of my, kids got sick. And when I went to the E.R. with my kid. I lifted her up without really thinking about holding in my stomach or anything he taught me. Because I was kind of out of my brain space in that moment. And I hurt myself again. Noah was a very encouraging about getting me back on track and going back to where I was, before I hurt myself.
I got frustrated with myself because at a certain time in my life, before the pandemic and before this injury, I was very flexible. I had great balance. And so when I do something very simple and I can’t balance or I can’t lift something, I get very frustrated with myself. And he’s very encouraging with me. He stays with me through my ups and downs. He’s extremely compassionate about my situation. He knows I have a lot of kids. He can relate to some of the things that I’m going through. Sometimes when we work virtually and if someone’s home from school and they’re walking around, he’s very patient with the situation.
If I have to pause for a second, go take care of something and come back, I find it very encouraging that he’s willing to understand that I’m, also, doing a virtual physical therapy meeting. He’s very compassionate about my life. I also really trust him. He’s very trustworthy and I feel like he’s not going to push me too far where I’m going to hurt myself again. And sometimes he’ll joke when I’m doing pushups and I’m like, it’s very challenging and I’ll be trying to do 15, and then he’ll say, “Okay, 10 more.” And I’ll be like, what? And he says, “Just kidding.” He keeps it fun.
Jeannie Gaffigan (and co.)
Noah, also has a mind towards the medical angle of things too. He is really smart, and so he’ll ask me specific questions about details about my acute symptoms, Things that are happening to my body. That also makes me really trust him because he has a great background in this and he seems really experienced.
People probably think that you have to be in the room with someone for them to be very detail-oriented about technique. Well, Noah really can recognize the details in, my posture and, if I’m holding my stomach in and all this stuff, and doesn’t have to be physically in the room because he observes every little detail.
Finally, I want to say that Noah is extremely positive. Even if I say, “Oh, I can’t do it today, Noah, I was up all night with a kid,” or “I didn’t sleep well,” or “I’m very discouraged,” He’ll keep it really positive and say, “Okay, let’s stretch out for the beginning of this session. Let’s stretch out.” And instead of going right into lifting or some of the more tedious, challenging exercises, we’ll do a yoga stretch and I will just all of a sudden feel terrific and I’ll get a lot of oxygen on my body and then I’ll be ready to work. And so his positive attitude has really been life-changing for me. I’m doing really well.
I just had a checkup with my doctor and she’s really amazed at my tone and my flexibility. I really feel that Noah had everything to do with that.
