1) As a college wrestler, I know the resilience and discipline it takes to push through challenges. But I know that resilience and discipline aren't always enough. Sometimes we need a little help in the form of compassion. For nine months, I lost the ability to bend over and tie my shoes. Debilitating, undiagnosable back pain kept me from training, competing, and at one point, even walking. CT scans and physical exams showed nothing, just my word that I was in severe pain. My word wasn't enough. I spent these months being led through mind-numbing physical therapy, being dismissed by doctors, and doomscrolling through TikTok searching for the magic solution to end my misery. Compassion was my magic solution, given to me by an 80-year-old man. A chiropractor. He listened when I told him my pain was worse upon waking up. He asked me one question no one else thought to ask: "How is your bed?". It changed my life. So simple, yet so hard to find. Someone who listened to me sparked my passion and made me realize that I wanted to help others the same way he helped me. With resilience, discipline, but most importantly, compassion. 2) To me, empathy means truly listening and recognizing the human being behind the diagnosis, or in my case, lack thereof. It's about acknowledging someone's pain, experiences, and frustrations. Empathy is more than just sympathy. Sympathy is easy; anyone can feel bad for the homeless man on the street, but empathy is the one person who gives up their lunch so that he can have a meal that day. I learned this firsthand in the experience I mentioned earlier. I lived with debilitating pain, and I spent months just begging for help. Doctors implied I was the problem, I exercised too much, my form was incorrect, I was hormonal, or it was simply in my head. I even started to meditate because I started to believe it might actually be in my head. It was one of the most isolating times in my life. Empathy saved me. In physical therapy, empathy is essential. As an aide, I have seen this firsthand. I once had a patient who ran to hug me after a simple prompt of "stand proud, chest high, and relax your shoulders" helped her with neck pain after a traumatizing assault caused her the injury in the first place. All the exercise in the world couldn't help her if she couldn't learn to raise her head, literally and figuratively. All because I listened and watched as her posture drooped as she told me how she was first injured. The brain is powerful; emotions are powerful. More than just the placebo effect, empathy drives true healing. Something that a stretch or an exercise on its own can never achieve. I can see the difference with my own eyes. When I see my busy boss halfway listening to a patient because he wants to get through his charting of the day, versus when he is all caught up and gives people his full attention. One person leaves the clinic feeling better, one person doesn't. It's not hard to tell who that person will be. When I become a physical therapist, I will carry these practices forward. Approaching every single person as just that, a person, not an injury to fix. I don't care if I am not the best at manual therapy, if I don't know all the exercises in the world, or if I don't choose the stretch that targets the correct fiber of the muscle. But I do care that I make space for all my patients to tell me their story, that I make them feel heard, that they truly believe I can help. If they don't feel my empathy, I might as well allow Google to take over my job. Empathy makes healthcare human.

For a full nine months, I was unable to bend over to tie my shoes. As many injured athletes do, I sought out physical therapy. Determined to get back to my sport, I religiously did the exercises and the stretches. I asked a million annoying questions of my therapist. I subjected myself to the torture of ice baths. I took supplements with hopes my lower back would return to its previous function. Still, nothing helped. The sharp ache simply wouldn't allow me to pursue my passion as a college wrestler. I'm well aware this sounds dramatic, but when you have dedicated the past decade of your life to one purpose, it is devastating. A huge blow to my sense of self, my mental health, and, as a university student in a new country, even my social life. "Good news! Your results are unremarkable." The CT scan showed nothing. A good thing, right? No. When a disabling pain has been haunting you for so long, you hope for something to be wrong, so that there is something to fix. When there is nothing wrong, doctors don't believe you, they think you're lying, you're a drug-seeking Mexican, you're a hypochondriac, it's all in your head, you're just a PMS-ing woman. Want some Tylenol? After several months of useless physical therapy I saw a spine surgeon. Suspecting a fracture, he told me to stop everything, don't run, don't lift, don't exercise. Total bedrest. That made everything worse. Within 3 days, I couldn't walk anymore. I remember my mom tried to help me stand and I cried from the pain of the gentle pull on my arm. I almost quit wrestling. Desperate, I advocated for myself to get another opinion. I saw a chiropractor. He changed my life. He didn't do anything special. But he believed I could get better. It wasn't his adjustments or his crazy techniques that looked more like voodoo magic than medicine. It was a question he asked me after he heard me tell him my pain is worse upon waking up in the morning, something I told every single doctor. "How old is your bed?" That night, I slept in my brother's room. His bed is comparable to a slab of concrete. Very unlike my own soft, squishy memory foam bed. When I woke up and braced myself to move and subject myself to the terrible act of standing up, I sobbed. Not from pain, but relief. Each day that I woke up from that hard bed, I felt a little better. Slowly, I recovered. It was my bed. My bed was hurting me. But the thing is, I asked every single doctor I saw if my bed could be the problem. Every single one told me it was unlikely. Except this chiropractor. It was so simple. But these simple words unleashed an incredible anger and desperation at how I was treated in my own experience with physical therapy. I realized I was just another credit card swipe to line the pockets of the therapist I was going to. They didn't care to ask how my back was feeling that day, but they never forgot to schedule my appointments for the upcoming month. Now, as an athlete and a physical therapy aide, I know the power of exercise and physical therapy when practiced with compassion. It's not that chiropractic care is better than physical therapy. The difference was the compassion I received. All it took was one man to have empathy. He listened. So, when I become a physical therapist, I will listen.