01/01/2026
Want to know why I understand what it’s like when your body doesn’t cooperate?
When I was in second year Uni studying Physio I went on a holiday to the snow and did exactly what you DON’T want to do - fell on hard ice and put my hand out to save myself. Knew I’d broken my wrist immediately. Cue a whirlwind trip to the snow medical centre to get my wrist put “almost” back into place, and a recommendation to get to a specialist in Melbourne asap. I needed surgery and some hardware in my wrist, which wasn’t so bad, but the journey after taught me some huge lessons about rehab and especially about listening - really hearing - what’s important to the person experiencing it.
Rehab was “done” for them much earlier than it was “done” for me.
I still remember the day my rehab team said “awesome, we’re nearly done with rehab” after I’d told them about successfully carrying my groceries the three blocks home to my house. Nearly done?! I was so far from where I wanted to be. There was this huge mismatch between their expectations of me and mine, so I found a new team to keep working towards my actual end goals.
I needed a second surgery that delayed my Physio career.
Despite consistent and active rehab there was a problem. Still experiencing intense pain and instability, especially with weight-bearing, and this was impacting the duties I needed to be able to do in my final Physio placements. I wasn’t allowed to participate until I got it sorted, so I needed a second surgery to remove a piece of floating bone and repair important ligaments in my wrist.
When I quizzed the surgeon about why this wasn’t sorted in the original surgery he said “statistically it should have been fine, looks like you’re an exception”. Inside I was raging thinking - yes I know! If you’d listened to me the first time about what my goals were post-surgery you would have recognised immediately that I was an outlier.
This mismatch of treatment happens so often when we assume everyone is “average”. So many of the people we support at AOK are the outliers - the ones excluded from studies for being too complex, the ones who’ve tried what works “for everyone else” but just felt worse.
We love supporting these outliers. Having the time to listen to what’s important to you, going on a hunt to find what works for you, figuring out together how to integrate it into your life.
If you’re an outlier tired of receiving “average” treatment, we’re so excited to support you.
