08/15/2024
A very real conversation I had with a patient... "what would life look like, if you didn't come here to get dry needled?" (This patient was 3 years removed from bad auto accident, pending litigations, identity crisis, unable to be as good of a father, husband/lover, employee, all his words.
My CI at the time would have this guy swoop into the clinic to get Functional Dry Needling (FDN) and then leave, and I would constantly internally eye roll. It just wasn't the intended use of dry needling.
Then after many discussions about chronic pain, TNE and some fun/wild graded motor exposures/mind body stuff (as in, "imagine the movement that hurts, "ow now my back hurts," when this person was prone on a table...
I finally just asked him what life would be like without FDN.
Because in my mind, I'm thinking - if it ain't working - it ain't working.
He'd been getting dry needled on a weekly basis for nearly 3 years at that point.
I think back to what a powerful lesson this was, because deep down I knew better to ask an open-ended question (thankful for my years of MI experience prior to PT school Precision Nutrition) about FDN. He straight up told me, he would rather commit su***de then the thought of stopping FDN.
It was the only thing getting him through. I told him that made sense to me and I didn't let any of my bias against FDN get in the way and we moved on. It obviously just wasn't worth discussing.