I have the greatest job on earth. For the past 10 years I have been on the road several times a month, traveled to all but 6 states (OK, NM, AK, OR and the Dakotas, I’m looking at you!), 5 Canadian provinces and much of Europe. I even traveled to Bermuda twice and Australia for work once! I love traveling around the world (I laugh at time zones!) and teaching other therapists how to maximize their patient outcomes using a piece of equipment that I fell madly in love with more than 2 decades ago. The rush I get, meeting a patient and deciding at a glance what will help them the most, demonstrating that to their therapists and helping them to problem-solve in order to “make it easy” is better than going to a concert and knowing all the words because they play ALL you’re favorite songs!
And then, it all came to a screeching halt. Grounded. My first cancelled trip was to the UK in March, one I actually pushed to keep on the calendar, until the conference I was speaking at was cancelled at the last minute. COVID-19 was far more widespread than we realized… Then the cancellations kept rolling in: Florida, Pennsylvania, NYC… I shopped for what was going to be a 2-week lockdown. Then the news came that all travel would be cancelled until the beginning of June. It is now mid-June and we are just starting to schedule in-person classes again. I get to drive a couple of hours to do a training in mid-July. I get to fly out to Iowa this summer. And I am feeling… scared. And excited. And anxious… and… I don’t know….
For going on 4 months now, I have had to shift my focus and my strategies dramatically. I have to use my words and gestures and videos to teach people to do things from a distance that I would normally use hand-over-hand strategies to teach. It takes longer and requires a different “muscle” to accomplish this. I shout for people to move the camera, that they are frozen, and “no, not like that, here- this, no, don’t hold the buckle, hold the strap…. the strap!!! As a New Yorker, talking with gestures comes naturally to me, but now all my gestures need to be in the camera frame (Zoomed in tight- don’t look at my mess!) But the high is the same. Talking a family member or a therapist through a series of steps to solve their problem can be effective, and can drive the same type of high as doing it in person. But I miss the hugs and high fives from the patients and their families when things come together for them! And so, back on the road in 5, 4, 3, 2….