Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 10, October 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Physical therapists set up shop in Greenwood

By JAMES BUSH

The mountaineering photos on the walls at Greenwood's Real Rehab Physical Therapy aren't just an attempt to relate to the injured athletes seeking treatment.

Therapist Bruk Ballenger is the mountaineer pictured in full gear climbing up a snowy incline. Similar photos hung throughout the light-filled Greenwood Avenue storefront were taken on climbing trips.

"People like the pictures," says therapist Izette Swan, Ballenger's business partner.

"They like the fact that they're seeing a physical therapist that actually goes out and does stuff," says Ballenger.

Make that two physical therapists: Swan recently accompanied Ballenger and his wife on a climb of Sloan Peak in the Glacier Peaks Wilderness. Both therapists also completed the 206-mile Seattle to Portland bike ride in a single day.

"We kind of cater towards the outdoors sports crowd," says Ballenger.

There is one drawback to being Seattle's most active physical therapists, adds Swan. "We both end up with a lot of injuries that we have to treat ourselves."

The two therapists opened Real Rehab in March, about five years after they completed the physical therapy degree program at the University of Washington. As students, Swan and Ballenger had talked of starting their own clinic someday. "We said, 'Let's talk about it in three years,' " recalls Swan. "Bruk called me up almost three years to the day [later] and said 'Are you ready?'"

Ballenger and Swan say there were several things they wanted to do differently in their own clinic. "We felt there was a time crunch working with other people," says Swan, so Real Rehab schedules one-hour sessions, rather than half-hour appointments. They also work one-on-one with clients, rather than using aides or assistants.

The two business partners had different introductions to physical therapy.

North End native Ballenger grew up in Wallingford, graduating from Bishop Blanchet High School (as a kid, he recalls visiting a roller rink that was located near the current site of Real Rehab's office at 514 Greenwood Ave. N). His initial goal was to be a doctor. To this end, he took premed courses and volunteered with medical teams during his term in the US Army. His experience taught him he enjoyed working one-on-one with people and preferred the hands-on work of a therapist to prescribing drugs or using invasive treatments.

Swan, a former Peace Corps volunteer from Massachusetts, became interested in the UW physical therapy program and was impressed with some of the students she met. "I'd never met people so enthusiastic about what they were studying," she says. "I decided that I would do it before knowing what I was really getting into."

Therapists treat patients through several methods, including the hands-on manual therapy, where they physically manipulate soft tissue and work on joints. They also design exercise programs to aid in recovery from surgeries, traumatic injuries, and overuse or stress injuries.

"We try to make all our our treatments real diverse so we can use them with a variety of injuries," says Ballenger.

The tools of the trade are both common and exotic. A standard exercise treadmill and a stationary bike stand side-by-side with a less common machine, set up to use arm, rather than leg power. A treatment room holds an ultrasound machine, used to get heat into deep tissue areas, and an electronic stimulation unit, used to stimulate specific muscles. A video camera is used to film runners and walkers to analyze gait problems which could be causing or exacerbating stress injuries.

A pair of wobble boards, used to test a person's balancing abilities, stand against a wall. What appears to be a mini-trampoline and a set of weighted balls stand nearby: patients bounce the balls off the trampoline and catch them to exercise injured shoulder and arm joints, explains Ballenger.

Although their clientele includes many with sports-related injuries, they also treat physical problems resulting from auto accidents and on-the-job injuries. Ballenger and Swan also provide balance assessments for older patients who have taken falls and work with housebound seniors suffering from general deconditioning.

Formerly dependent on referrals from doctors, physical therapy is now a direct access health care service. In fact, some clients come to therapists first for injury screening, to see if the problem can be addressed through therapy or if it requires a doctor's care.

"The whole physical therapy industry is starting to become more autonomous and independent," says Ballenger. "It's a great profession."

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Real Rehab Physical Therapy is located at 514 N 85th St.; 706-7500.