There goes another year – what actually happened?

Adaptation is definitely what I have done, and continue to do on a multiple many times a day basis. Thus is the life of an amputee / disabled person.

How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

What has happened since COVID? (New Zealand’s first lock down was in March 2020)

• I have downsized my business
• I have relocated my business now working from home
• I have lost a leg
• I am now divorced
• I re-branded my business changing the trading name
• I reconstructed my life as a single person in their 50’s
• I have adapted my abilities and disabilities in order to learn how to decorate my own home.

I could go on, but those are the things that stand out to me. My biggest was closing my commercial premises and downsizing to continue trading by working from home.

At the time I really didn’t have too many other options and I was not sure I really wanted to do it at all, having always liked the physical separation between work and home.

But, adapt was what I had to do if I wanted to continue being self employed with my new significantly reduced capacity.

Having spent the previous few years off the front line simply doing office admin due to my TKR then the issues developing with my left foot, in effect, I handed my entire client base to my staff. When I went back to working just for myself, without staff, this was a terrifying prospect. It meant that I had to pretty much start over and build a new client base up from scratch. I had no idea how that would look as an amputee personal trainer / massage therapist.

Personal training

This was really tough to return to. I wanted to give both a really good crack though, never say never and all that.

Most of the time since returning to work in this capacity has been spent working from home meaning I am an online PT. I have found this pretty flipping challenging. Not because of the online element but because of my physical limitations. I just simply cannot move the same way as I did before. This has always made demonstrating exercises to able bodied clients really confronting for me. All it does is constantly remind me of all the things I cant do the same any more.

I have persevered with this for 12 months now, and although I am getting by, Frankly it is no longer enjoyable. My personal battles with fitness adaptations are challenging enough without me putting myself in the same arena in a work space as well. For this reason I have decided to no longer advertise for new PT clients. I will just focus on who I have at present and eventually phase this out for a while. I need to take care of myself first before I can take care of anyone else.

If you had told me in March 2020 at the start of that first lock down that 3 years later I would be quitting I would have laughed at you. I don’t necessarily think this is ‘over and out’, more like I need to take an extended break from it for a while.

Massage

Honestly, I thought this would be like asking the impossible. But, I am really enjoying being back to it, even if my capacity is significantly reduced.

I have a wide range of medical experiences, as well as medical knowledge and fitness knowledge. This has made me the one to see if someone has an unusual issue that they have not been able to pin down.

I have sent people to specialists who ordinarily wouldn’t have gone there. I have successfully retreated people who never thought massage would ever help with their issues., referred people to physiotherapists and much more.

In just under 12 weeks since being back working for myself only (my last staff member left in Dec 2022) I have almost a full brand new client base and have so much work that people are having to wait 2-3 weeks to be able to see me.

Do I need to consider getting another staff member again? No. This client base I have built up come to see me because I am me.

They want my sports knowledge. My medical knowledge, my personal training knowledge, not just any massage therapist. How do I know that? Because they have told me.

In this context, what has happened to me is to my advantage. I know how medical systems work. I know a ton of things about the vascular system that I did not know before. This has already enabled me to recognize worrying symptoms in a client who presented to me that meant I knew they needed specialist referral.

Have I adapted? Yes I have. Pretty successfully actually. You might go as far to say I have even adapted in the face of adversity and have gone as far as turning it into a new success.