Life's Learning Curve
Storytelling: How we became us! We take a look backward & find ourselves negotiating our LIFE EXPERIENCES, discovering life's various tones -comedy, drama, and nostalgia. Our podcast offers imagery of a documentary recreation, but for audio. Life happens in a heartbeat. Let's learn, thrive and love from our experiences while we're here. Cheers!
Life's Learning Curve
Bilateral Butt Lift (& other P.T. stories)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdNWxF_wA4o We podcast our first remote from Studio 502 here in the mid mid midwest to Austin, TX., and swap Physical Therapy stories with Dr. Trace McClintock. 'Tis realler than real!
As soon as the guy blew the whistle, we took off running and I went to a slide behind the first piece of cover and there was a bolt head that will sticking up out of the turf and it just completely filleted my shin open down to the muscle. Um, I was in one of my friends, uh, like marine issued pants, so they were very sturdy, not meant to be cut. Um, and you could just see like a little hole down near my shin. And I was like, Ooh, that hurt more than the size of that hole
Speaker 2from a filet of leg to determining a bilateral but lift protocol. We exchanged stories today with a recent phd of physical therapy. Now imagine 20 years of schooling becoming an inpatient and outpatient physical therapy doctor, your location, a veteran's administration hospital in Texas. On this podcast, we'll meet a talented young doctor who's practiced just under a year. With enthusiasm and passion, he dives headfirst into today's new and ever changing frontier. He sources, mentors, education and the constant exchange of information to keep his clinical skills sharp and to serve patients across the continuum of care. This is Life's Learning Curve.
Speaker 3Standby
Speaker 2On today's podcast. We'll talk to doctor of physical therapy, Trace McClintock in four segments. We'll hear about segment one called I moved a lot. Doctor McClintock explains why before college, his family moved six times. Segment two called career choices and influences. Dr McClintock tells us just how he became a DPT segment, three called duck legs and whiskey docs. Here the doctor finds an effective way to communicate to the PT world through blogs and podcasts and finally in segment four called Butt Lifts and filet of leg. Well, you're just going to have to listen to this one. Today we're happy to be here with a doctor of physical therapy, a D.P.T., Who is very focused on his own personal growth and he embraces connecting with others and his profession and is prominent all over social media these days. He makes communication and learning cooperate. This is doctor Trace McClintock DPT. Hi Trace. Doing good Paul. How are you doing today? Great. What was life like growing up for you?
Speaker 1I was definitely an interesting childhood. My Dad was coast guard growing up, so we moved around every like two to three years. Um, so we started out, I was born in Ohio and then moved to Bolingbrook, Illinois and then we moved down to Puerto Rico where I started school. And after that we moved up to Wisconsin. So we went from the nice tropical weather of the island to that first year we were there, we got like 56 inches of snow over a weekend I think. But after Wisconsin we moved to West Virginia. Um, we were there for another three years and then settled down in central Illinois my sophomore year of high school. It was difficult towards the end when we were in high school and as we got older, when we were younger,
Speaker 4the basically sports played the bridging role when we moved to somewhere new. Luckily me and my brother were both fairly decent at sports and that was our biggest like um, kind of bonding moment I guess for the kids around the neighborhood. We were able to play pickup games of basketball or football or it was baseball season. We're going to the park and play in there.
Speaker 2I assume your father's retired now. Uh, where did you guys finally settle.
Speaker 4Uh, so we settled in Oakwood, Illinois. He, yeah, he retired in 2007 I believe. Um, and he's been working with the VA ever since. He works in the safety department. Does their fire safety code inspection well what kind of kid were you in school? I was, it's interesting cause I was kind of that hybrid between like a jock and a nerd because my parents definitely pushed, you know, being good in school, getting good grades, you know, if I got a B it was never, you know, we got talked down to or felt like we weren't good enough. But it was always like, did you give it your best? Like is that the best you could have done was to get a B in that class? If it was that's fine. But they knew most of the time either. We slacked off at one point. We were mostly, me and my brother were both A and B students. Um, more A's and B's usually. But being in that kind of class, you didn't have the mixture of, you know, the kids that you were playing sports with were also the kids who were in class with, because in our school it had that stereotype of like the jocks, you know, they were in the normal level classes and then if you are in the accelerated classes, you weren't really playing too many sports, especially not football, baseball, basketball. It was more like the track and cross country. Kids were usually smarter doing those sports where they weren't having head trauma and things like that.
Speaker 2Why physical therapy? How did you find that career?
Speaker 4So I started off thinking I was going to go into pharmacy basically when I had no idea what I wanted to do. I googled top paying jobs with the most growth and pharmacy popped up and after I got into organic chemistry and working with a different drug names and interactions and all that, I realized that wasn't for me. I wanted to work more with people instead of pills. I got to work at the VA in Danville and there I worked in their physical medicine and Rehab Services Department and through that I got to work with and chiropractic, physical therapy, occupational therapy, kinesiotherapy their, physiatrists, audiology, speech pathologists, kind of got to see the whole spectrum of Rehab Services. And I really liked the physical therapy team. It was one of the larger teams. They had more physical therapists on staff. Um, but what really solidified it was when I went to U of I my first year, I got to go overseas and do like a mission trip with some health students. It was a bunch of public health and community health students and pre-med and we went over there and opened up like a clinic with this doctor that we were staying with. And for one of the weeks we did that and then the other week we got to bounce around between a couple of other clinics and the doctor knew a physiotherapist over there and he let me shadow with him for a couple of days. And just seeing how you don't need the like water treadmills and the robotic gear to get people up and moving. It's like you can make a lot of impact just helping people move and get out of pain in a very simple way. Just kind of movement is medicine kind of approach and that really kind of set it home for me. I love doing it. I love working with the physio therapist there and seeing the impact you can make. You must have met some great people while you were over there. The number one thing, and this is one that I talked about during my PT school interviews, um, there was this kid who, he was in a car accident and he was probably 18 or 19 at this time and he wasn't able to communicate. He was nonverbal. He could still use his hands. Um m pretty good actually. It wasn't too restricted. Okay. But he wasn't able to communicate. And The P.T. was focusing on, you know, getting him to move a little bit better kind of ADLs , which is taking care of things like washing , yourself, brushing your teeth, things like that. And Yeah. And as we kind of move through, and he was at the end of the session, he was like, is there anything else you think we could do with him? I've been working with him for about a year now and we kind of just maintenance at this point. And I asked, I was like, have you ever like thought about doing sign language? And the PTU was like, what do you mean? And he's like, I was said, you know, he's still can move his hands. Is he able to communicate, um, like American sign language? And he's like, I never thought about that. I didn't ask him. So he pulled up on his phone just like a youtube video of, um, like American sign language and showed him the letters of the name and the kid was able to spell out his name. Wow! Through sign language and you just saw like a huge grin come on his face. He just smiled and like for the first time in a while he was able to communicate with a purpose and even though you know, he wasn't a pro at it, you could learn a couple of letters to spell your name out. He felt that payback. Yeah. And it was instant. It was like you can make change really
Speaker 1quick just on showing someone something that they don't know about. They don't know ways to communicate, you've never been exposed to it. And especially after like a trauma, you know, he probably had some sort of brain damage, which is why he was not verbal, but he was able to understand like if I spell out these letters, that's my name, I can now communicate. And the PT was like, Oh, this is something we definitely work on.
Speaker 2That's a life changing moment for him. And probably for you as well.
Speaker 1There's definitely been other times where it's like you make that instant change with somebody, but um, I'll never forget that being like the first time I'm sure you know, in teaching or something and you see that A-ha moment that a student gets in, like where it just clicks. It's very cool. Yeah. That was something I had never experienced before.
Speaker 2Kids are pretty transparent for the most part and they will, uh, when they get something or understand something or when they want more, they want enrichment, you can actually see it on their faces. Whereas I think as we get older, we tend to mask a lot of our feelings and how things are to us because we don't, we don't want to give away a lot of affect, but, but kids, boy, they'll, they'll let you know right away. You can see their eyebrows shoot up. It's like a cartoon.
Speaker 5You worked jobs
Speaker 2o n the way to becoming a physical therapist, a doctor, physical therapy, as we all have prior to our careers. And a lot of those jobs will impact us in certain ways that we don't expect. Can you think of a time or a story or a place you work that impacted what you do today?
Speaker 1One was bartending and serving and the other was actually my first job in high school, which was working on a horse farm and the horse farm one just taught me like how to be humble and reflecting back now it's like I've done a lot worse stuff for a lot less pay, so it's, I mean cleaning up after horses, moving them around, feeding them and also you learn to respect like an animal of that size, like old think that you'd never worked with horses or you've just written them. It's like, oh they're just an animal. But it's like those things are so powerful that you have to like respect what it is. Yes. But the serving and bartending definitely taught me how to make that small talk, how to put the customer first. The customer is always right and how to adjust and avoid confrontation when it arises sometimes because... Absolutely, In a bar ...If it's your fault then you know you're still the one that has to deal with it. Whether it's as a physical therapist or as a server or a bartender, if you know their food came out wrong, you weren't the one that did it, but you're the one that has to deal with it. If they're in pain, you're not the one that put them in pain, but you're the one that has to have to deal with it.
Speaker 2So much psychology in the, in that when you're working in a bar and there's some alcohol involved and it's, this is also a college town, so, uh, University of Illinois, right? Yup. If you ran into any of your professors when you were going through your final phase of school and you could speak to them about what you're doing right now, how you're actively engaged in the real world process of physical therapy, being a doctor of that, uh, what might you tell them?
Speaker 4And first thank them for giving me all the knowledge that I now have clinically, but it also, you know, probably talk with him cause I'm sure they know more than they can tell us in class that you're not going to know everything. There are going to be those patients that their, it's not the way that they presented in the book. It's not, you couldn't have wrote a test question about it. There is no way to prepare for someone who's coming in after, you know, having their leg amputated after a car accident. And how, how do you prepare for that? It's like when it's your first time, you just have to have that experience. Like there's no way to prep yourself or talk through or read about working with someone in that situation. It's just you have to have that clinical experience with it. And I'd love to just bounce stories off of them and see because they can teach you things from the book. But when you get into, you know, just having a conversation about clinical experience, it opens up Pandora's box and everything that they've seen in some of my professors have been practicing physical therapy longer than I've been alive.
Speaker 2The next phase of what I want to talk to you about, and that's your, uh, social media, uh, communication you're doing. One of the things that you do very well i s communicate using a blog called Physio for You. I've, I've read almost all your blogs and even though I'm not a doctor of physical therapy, I, I liked the way you write. I liked the way that you lay things out. There's always a beginning, a middle and kind of a hook in there from reading your blog. I know you have kind of a soft spot for veterans because of your father's service?
Speaker 4Yeah, that's my dad's service. My grandpa's service growing up, being like a military brat, we grew up around everyone who was serving, um, whether it be coast guard or Army or navy, whoever it was. It seems like everyone that my parents knew we're serving our country. They were all veterans so or active duty. So it definitely is a population I enjoy working with and it's, most of my patients are not the typical people you think about that are going to see a physical therapist. It's not someone who rolled their ankle or had an ACL surgery. A lot of it is either chronic pain or they had been jumping out of planes for 20 years and now their knees hurt and it's, it's just a very complicated patient population but it's one that's very rewarding and you get it like when you get it just right and you're able to help that person. Yeah,
Speaker 1There's nothing really like it.
Speaker 2Well part of that's getting old too. I mean what you're talking about is of course is like they've been jumping out of planes their whole lives and something tells me you didn't just make that up, that you've come across somebody who's done that as people age becomes a little bit harder to do this or that. One did you wake up and all of a sudden there was a pain.
Speaker 1It's an important part is just kind of keeping up with the exercises like keeping moving. Cause sometimes people want the quick fix and then when it goes away and it comes back, they're almost teaching people that the body's resilient. As long as you treat it properly, as long as you're moving well, eating right, sleeping and you're not like overly stressed, the body can handle a lot of things. But if you're not treating it right and all these things are going downhill, then yeah, you might have some pains and sure. I mean if you're 85 or something and you have a little bit of back pain, if it's not stopping you from doing what you're doing, it's not that big of a deal. It's just kind of not let it slow you down as the biggest thing.
Speaker 2Some of your blogs, um, that I liked a, here's a title. I liked the top three reasons for not seeing the physical therapist over the holidays. Another one, why you should be skeptical of everything you learn in PT school. And my favorite so far has been the blog and I don't have a title for it, but I remember you writing about coming out in greeting your patients in the waiting room, not having the patients be brought to you or you come into the room later after they've been placed there. And I think that's just great because I, I, in my personal experience, I, I see a lack of connection sometimes between doctors and their patients.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I would say all of that really relates to like the customer service aspect of physical therapy that people miss out on it. And if you think going back to like serving and bartending, all three of those are like things you could look back on like top three reasons for not seeing a physical therapist. It's just, you know, reasons for not going to a restaurant. Either you've heard something is bad about it, you've heard something else's bad or it's going to take too much time to go out of your way. Like you have to address the people, where their at teach them why your business is worth coming to reason for being a skeptic. Just like again with food service, if you're the owner of something and your food is no good, but she thinks it's the best, the market doesn't lie. So it's the same way with physical therapy. Research is if you think your method of whether it's massage or ultrasound or electrical stimulation, if you think it's the cure all but the research is showing it's not, then you have to be skeptical of it, of like maybe you're just getting some anecdotal evidence. Um, and then the last one of greeting patients at the door, I think that's huge and if.... You know, hopefully everyone can have time to do that because you're making that first impression. If I can meet you at the door or in the waiting room, shake your hand, look you in the eye and ask you how your day or your weekend is. Or if it's not the first visit. Even I'm asking you about, you know, your kids or your family or how the game was this weekend and it's just getting on a personal level. Oh yeah. That's my favorite little trick. Also as well with, you know, if you're going out to the waiting room to greet them, they're not really thinking that they're under the microscope yet. So you can see how they're sitting in their chair. You can see how they get up when they first called their name and then as they start walking back when they're not thinking about it because there's a big difference between, let's walk back to the waiting room and here I'm going to analyze your gate, take 10 steps for me, turn around, come back.
Speaker 2Hey, did you grow up with a dad who told you to stand up straight all the time?
Speaker 4I got more of the uncross your arms because you look like you're closed off.. I would always sit there and kind of just act like I was paying attention, but he said that's just bad body language. You look like you're closed off, like you're not paying attention.
Speaker 2Interesting. On Your blog, you've called yourself a skeptic and you brought this up a few minutes ago. Where did that come from or what are you saying?
Speaker 4That blog was, um, co written by one of my classmates and he wrote a big chunk of it and I, you know, agree with it. We talked about it and we're just having a conversation where a lot of the things that are taught in school aren't necessarily best practice anymore, but that's what's on the boards. So you have to study to get your license and then just accept that some of the things you learn aren't necessarily best practice. They don't, they've been proven even not to work sometimes and we're still learning them. So if you take everything as you know, well the book said this, it's like the book could be 10 years old since it was copywritten got to look more at the articles and it's also really easy to go down rabbit holes of research when you Google, like why is this intervention effective? You're just going to get positive kind of results. Where's if you Google, why is this intervention not effective?
Speaker 2Uh, so stay curious, stay curious, keep learning basically. And to keep an open mind as well. I want to ask you about free time. You went to school for 20 years and it was intense and it was the same pattern for a long time. 20 years is a long time to go to school under that same pattern. So now that you are a doctor and you're practicing and you're working, you probably sometimes find yourself for with some free time. Have you learned to adjust to that?
Speaker 4Uh, still definitely adjusting. Cause even when I first started practicing, um, I was still studying for the boards. So it's only been maybe five months since I've passed the boards, five or six months since I passed the boards. Um, and it's not bad through the week to week, usually with the commute and by the time you get home and work out and make dinner, it's time to wind down a little bit. And that's not bad. But the weekends is definitely where finding time to like fill your schedule or finding something to fill your schedule is difficut sometimes cause you don't have homework. There's not anyone pressing you to write a paper or like do anything that you don't want to do. I've really filled it with podcasting. Kind of like we had talked about, um, writing blogs and then we just got two kittens. So those are taking up some time.
Speaker 2As long as you start, don't start writing blogs about the kittens. I'm okay with it all. We might, there might be one in the works. So get back to writing. When did you find out that there was a writer in there? I really like how you write. Obviously I don't, cannot keep up with the content at the level that you're at, but I like how you, right. Where did that come from?
Speaker 4Oh, it probably from my junior year journalism class. If you would've told, you know, third grade me that I would be writing for fun in my free time, I would have thought you were crazy. I was awful at writing. I had bad handwriting. Yeah. It didn't really like reading things that were assigned. I like the fictional reading. Um, but in journalism I learned to write with a purpose and right. Succinct. So I wasn't having to just write educational papers. We could do columns, right. About things that were on our mind, kind of use it as an outlet and through PT school that really helped. It was something that I could use to veer away from the grind of anatomy and physiology and pharmacology. All these heavy level sciences is like some of my first ones were talking about different podcasts to listen to and it gives me an excuse to go listen to a bunch of podcasts and an outlet to just, and I always try to write like I'm writing to my friends basically because I'd rather someone show me on a video or talk through it in a page or two. I don't need to read 50 pages on something that, you know, you could have summed it up a lot quicker. That's how I try to right now.
Speaker 2Well, I think a lot of college is like that. Any way where, you know, my experience in colleges, you'd come out of a three hour class and go, man, I think I could have taught that in about 15 minutes. Well, you know, there were those years I went to, you know, there's an undergraduate school. I went to graduate school, I went to postgraduate school and, and it got to the point where I realized I didn't need to keep going, but I did. I got all the way up to writing my doctoral thesis and my first child was born and I thought well that's way more important than writing a paper. And I liked to write, I love to write and at this point in my life I like doing research and things like that too. But at that point it was more creative. So I stopped and I never went back and I don't regret it. The time should be spent more with the people than the paper.
Speaker 4And you even found out that you enjoyed doing like more the video editing cause I've seen some of... Oh yeah, ...you'd done before. How did you, cause this was back in the nineties before people are like, I've seen my parents videos. Right. You know, it was kind of just them holding a camera real shaky. And yours seemed to be pretty crisp, how'd you get into like that as a hobby?
Speaker 2As a kid, I used to write stories, mostly nonfiction stuff about my family and exaggerate things, you know, about, um, uh, just odd, quirky things. My grandma, my mom, my sister, my dad or me we'd all said did, and how it went from point a to point B. And I would write these stories out and as I was writing them, I wanted to illustrate it. So I draw, I would draw a cartoon that went with this. And while it was drawing the cartoon, I kept thinking, I can't wait to get back to writing. So I'd get back to writing. And as I was writing, I think I can't wait to get back to drawing a cartoon on it. So it went back and forth. But I wasn't that great at cartooning. And I liked it. Uh, when I got to the age where a consumer video products started coming out, I needed a camera. I mean I saved at all the money I could, could bought a consumer video camera and started shooting. And that was the point when I began to put those two elements together. Um, it just, hadn't been in place yet. So I always thought in terms of, um, shots, I always have shots. That's something different to a bartender. I always thought in terms of shots of shooting with a camera of I want to, I want this, then I want this, then I want, I know I need a long shot here. I can't stop doing that. It's a just something I've done since I've been a kid. I like, uh, I like play-in music and play-out music. You'll see that in this podcast. I just liked doing it. And then it's putting together a product that other people can sit down and watch and enjoy or critique whatever they want to do. It makes me happy. It makes me feel good. So
Speaker 3[inaudible]
Speaker 2My, my home movies are like a little individual productions of my daughter being born. My daughter's first birthday shoving cake in her face and all the relatives are there, you see them, there's music that goes with it. So like the full production thing and we're in an age right now where kind of under produced, uh, as far as I'm concerned or it's drag and drop. I decided I'm, I'm sticking with the, I'm sticking with the production stuff. I like, I like things produced well.
Speaker 3Me. Overall social media,
Speaker 2how does that fit into your physical therapy practice and what's the response been?
Speaker 4So for me, it doesn't play as big of a role right now with me working at the VA, it's not like we're direct marketing to doctors or consumers or patients asked to be veterans. They have to be referred to us from the VA doctors. Um, but there is a big push now for physical therapy to become direct access, meaning to your local clinic, walk in and say, I have back pain and they can treat you, they can see you. And it's still kind of becoming widespread. Most states have at least some sort of direct access. Now at least you can do an eval and then you may need a doctor's note, but you can walk in and see a physical therapist right off of the street. So in Illinois, they've recently approved it within the last year. Um, Texas, we're still working on it. There's a big push to with like cash based physical therapy because with the way insurance companies are, people are charged and overcharged and if you don't pay your deductible then you're basically doing cash PT anyways. So people are trying to get in for five or six visits where they wouldn't have even reached their deductible yet and making people better quicker. There's more of a push towards, you know, doing that evidence informed practice where you're not just seeing someone because your insurance is paying for it. It's more to make you better. So the only way to really reach a large scale of customers these days is social media. If you're relying on, you know, the local newspaper and commercials, you're kind of behind the game now because there's like Dvr to fast forward through the commercials. No one watches them. I haven't, I can't remember when I've seen someone under the age of 50 looking at a newspaper recently.
Speaker 2I think it's kind of fun when you do see somebody looking at a paper though.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2It's like a, it's a throwback. It's cool.
Speaker 4Yeah, but now it's like you can boost your Facebook post for 20 bucks and it even shows like your reache is 2,500 people or more and it's like you're not going to get that investment from doing a print based ad. So if you're not out there kind of hustling with social media, you're missing out on a lot of potential customers because even with social media you can focus who you want your message to go to. Like if you're trying to work with people who are ages 40 to 65 in the greater Chicago area, focus that way.
Speaker 2Instagram in particular is really stepping up these days,
Speaker 4how to utilize the hashtags because you can reach so many people as long as you're doing it properly and it doesn't have to be anyone that you're friends with or following or anything like that. Your it will. Your ability to reach out is so much more on Instagram and Twitter and things like that.
Speaker 2Have you had anybody reach out to you after you've posted a podcast or a blog and responded in an interesting or a unusual manner? Not Unusual, but just a response.
Speaker 4Yeah. Um, more for duck legs cause we've been doing it for two years, a little bit over two years now.
Speaker 2A duck legs is another, a podcast that is done by you and an other group of people?
Speaker 4Yeah, two other guys. Oh okay. Um, it's more interview based. So we focused on kind of talking to the bigger names in the physical therapy field about a wide spectrum of things from geriatric and the older adult to pediatrics to women's health. Everything.
Speaker 2Your podcast, the one that you have, uh, most recently put up this year is called whiskey docs. Whiskey Docs. First of all, where can we find it? Yeah.
Speaker 4So you can find it on anywhere where you're listening to this podcast at pretty much, um, Spotify, Google Play, iTunes or the ApplePodcasts. Um, it's off of buds. Buzzsprout if you're looking at that platform.
Speaker 2But what was the inception of that?
Speaker 4So it was actually from when we were in PT school. Me and my cohost Dylan, we were mates and it started just us. There was one weekend where the other two roommates were away, um, went back home or something and we were just having a couple drinks and talking and it's like, we should, we should start a podcast. I think we were playing FIFA and just kind of hanging out, you know, in school. We didn't really have time where we wanted to actually start the podcast and we didn't really know what we're doing. But kind of like you said, once we graduated and we didn't have to study as much and we had more free time, it's like, why don't we, why don't we do this thing? Like there's a need for people learning about what physical therapists do, um, what to do when they are in pain, even though we're not giving specific advice. That's kind of a general thing that at least if people know that physical therapy can treat these kinds of things, that's a big step in the right direction. And then also keeping it lighthearted with both of us are big fans of whiskey and Bourbon and trying different things. And we're always going to different bars or distilleries, right? We're trying to get better at it, trying to keep it just base level. Here's what we're seeing, here's what we do. Here's some whiskeys that you guys may try if you like certain things.
Speaker 2Well what's, so where did you develop an appreciation for whiskey? I mean you did slightly answer that there, but uh, uh, why whiskey and where did it all come from?
Speaker 4So it actually started when I was in Undergrad and I didn't, I didn't really like beer. A lot of people are, you know, have a beer with the boys and you can have a beer after a hard test. And I just didn't like drinking it. I don't still really like light or anything like that. And I didn't know craft beers worth thing started trying different spirits, you know, vodka, rum whatever in whiskey just has something that what I honestly, what I really liked about it is after one or two, if you notice you start not tasting it as much. That's where it's time to slow down. Whereas like the vodka and things like that that you can hide with mixers. Yes. It's too easy to, you know, if you're not being careful with it in college, you can go downhill quick. Whereas whiskey, it's like I'm throwing a couple back, I'm not tasting it anymore. I need to have a water need to slow down a bit. It kind of control yourself. And I liked the flavor of it. There's so many different types between like a bourbon doesn't taste like, you know, a scotch or an Irish whiskey. I'll say that someone doesn't like whiskey. I think they haven't tried the right stuff for them. Especially now that they're flavoring it. Um, you can get peach whiskeys and blackberry and yeah, different fruity flavors that are good. So
Speaker 2yeah. And that's one of the great things about your podcast too, is you don't take, you take yourself seriously. You talk, it's like two guys sitting, talking after a day at work and just relaxing, kind of kicking back. I liked that premise.
Speaker 6Okay.
Speaker 2Or what do you do with patients that don't follow through? They come to see you but they don't,
Speaker 4yeah.
Speaker 2Maybe do the stretches or whatever you ask them to do.
Speaker 4Yeah. So I, at that point I kind of feel like it was on me most of the time, um, that I didn't explain it well enough. We didn't get the patient buy in first visit if I, if we had shown that what they were doing was going to improve them. Typically patients continue to do it though. I did you just have a patient who in session she had had pain down into her calf for six months. Um, I noticed she was a little laterally shifted, which is just something in the spine. So the back was playing a role into the calf pain. We corrected the shift in her pain went completely away that she'd had for six months and we saw her the next week and I was like, have you been doing exercises? She was like, no. I went for a run this weekend though and ran 12 miles and I didn't have any pain. But now it's kind of starting to come back and was like, but you didn't do any of your exercises. No. It's like, so with the exercises you felt better and without them you feel worse. It's like, what do we need to do? She's like, yeah, I need to the exercises. Um, so it's painting that picture and getting a good patient buy in because I mean, if they're not buying what I'm selling, then I didn't do my job if we're trying to make them better.
Speaker 2You put out a podcast that had within its title a bilateral butt lift physical therapy protocol of some kinds of something like that. Here's a clip from that podcast.
Speaker 7Is that allowed? I don't know what the precautions are for a bilateral Butler plastic surgery. Is there like sheer force stuff when I'm doing a transfer that I need to worry about and so I, I'm like, hold on. I go down and like call the inpatient PT that I know, give her a call and like, Hey, remember when you jokingly said like unless there's a stat console when they put it in a snack council tonight, I have to be this evil and what do I do for a bilateral but lift? I've never seen this before. And she was like, do we do that in our hospital is like you've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 2that was a clip from the podcast. Whiskey docs
Speaker 1for the full story. They'll want to check out the whiskey doc spot podcast. Right.
Speaker 2Incidentally, if, uh, anything ever happens to whiskey docs and it goes under, for some reason a new title for a new podcast might be bilateral butt lift. We'll have to keep that in mind. Yeah, please. Do you have a great story about attending a Bachelor party in an injury that took place?
Speaker 4Yeah. This last year, um, in June, yeah, June,
Speaker 1we were at a bachelor party. It was, I was the best man in the wedding. It was very first sober bachelor party, but I had been in, okay. I've been a part of and we were playing paint ball. Everything was going good. We played for like two and a half hours. It was the very last match of the day. We were running out of paint. So we're just kind of using the last bit of pain, getting ready to get out of there. And we were on, we were playing speed ball, so it's on a nice astro turf field. Yeah, clean cut. It's not like we were running through the woods like we were previously where you have to worry about rocks or trees or sure holes or anything like that. It was all, you know, turf field looked clean. And as soon as the guy blew the whistle, we took off running and I went to a slide behind the first piece of cover and there was a bolt head that was sticking up out of the turf and it just completely filleted my shin open down to the muscle. So, um, I was in one of my friends, uh, like marine issued pants, so they were very sturdy, not meant to be cut. Um, and you could just see like a little hole down near my shin. And I was like, Ooh, that hurt more than the size of that hole. And then I started noticing the blood soaking the pant leg. And so I rolled it up trying to see, you know, what I could see. And as I got up to like the middle of my leg, I just noticed yellow tissue and having a background, you know, in cadaver labs and physical and anatomy, I was like, that is fat tissue. That's not good. Um, so I laid there, we called, I was like, stop, stop, stop. We've got to stop the match. Um, and they finally did, they came over to me and the groom of the wedding was like, Oh are you all right? I was like, no, we're going to have to go to the hospital, you know. So he went to cut the pants cause we had like, you know, like a, like a leatherman kind of knife sort of thing where it's like all tool. And he stuck it in the hole and went to cut the first time. And because they were combat pants, they're not meant to be cut. So he slipped with the knife and I was like, stop, stop. I don't need a knife wound on top of this. Hold on a second, I'll just take the pants off in the middle of the field. And so I'm laying in my boxers and at that point when the pants uncovered all of it, it was like, Ooh, yeah, someone go get a car. We got to go to the hospital. Yeah, because they were like, do you want us to call an ambulance? I was like, no, it doesn't hurt that bad right now. And I'm not bleeding a whole lot now because we had an elevated, we had a tourniqueted. okay. It was like, wow, we can, we can get this in a car. So my brother got his car backed up onto the field. We got back in and we're driving all the way there. And my brother, who he's an engineer, has no background in anything medical. He looks back and hands me a water bottle and I was like, what is this for? He's like, I don't know anything about this, but it's probably good to be hydrated. I don't know. It's like, thanks. You're probably right. I guess I should, I should. Was it hard to be diagnostic when it was about yourself? Surprisingly, no. It actually I think helped a lot that I was able to be like, yes, this is trauma. No, it's not too bad. I know I can still move my ankle, so that's good. Um, and it was the first thing I thought about, which is weird. Um, so it I think helps in that situation because as we were getting ready to get me into the car as well, they were like, all right, well lift you into the car. And I was like, no, don't do that. It's going to extend my leg. That's going to hurt. Let's see here. Just hold on. And I'm like, scooted back to the car and use my arms and my good leg to prop it up and get in the car. Wow? To the Er. The nurse there was like, oh, she was typing on her computer and it's like, what are your name and what are you here for? And I was like, Trace McClintock and she still wasn't looking up and I was like, I got a really bad headache and she looks up from the computer kind of concerned. And then she looks down as I'm sitting there in a wheelchair without my pants on with a huge cut on my leg. Oh, So they got me back. It was great. I got, it took like three hours. I was stitched up.
Speaker 2Yeah. Was able to walk out of the hospital. Really. I saw, you know, I saw the photo, the stitched up photo of the um, uh, they put staples in, is that correct?
Speaker 1They put stitches as a top layer and stitches as a bottom layer. So it wasn't stapled but stitched up.
Speaker 2Well, as I saw that one, and I had heard, you don't want to see the picture of the filleted leg and it was probably three to four weeks later, it came up online as a viral photo. It wasn't even attached to you anymore, but there was your leg online and making its way around the world of your filleted leg. So congratulations. You know, you're well known for that I guess. Yeah. On Twitter we got 175,000 retweets I think. So that's, that's a decent amount of people he'd go, man, if only you had connected Whiskey Docs to that one. I know.
Speaker 5If you could go back to age 10, 11,
Speaker 212, what would you tell yourself about your future?
Speaker 1Oh, I would probably say, um, try to listen to my parents a little bit more and if I thought something was going to get me in trouble, probably should not do it. Cause I'm only done a few dumb things in high school and early college and every time I tried it I got caught. So there's only been two or three things, but I got caught on all of them. So nothing major doing all right. Now. Definitely as I get older I realize what my parents were telling me was for the best. Right. But as a kid, you're not going to listen to everything your parents say. No.
Speaker 2Well, Trace, thank you for being here today. I appreciate it and look forward to your future podcasts and blogs.
Speaker 1Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.
Speaker 8Dr. Trace McClintock has many great things yet to come after multiple moves as a child and sports being used as a way to acclimate with new friends, family support, and even a filleted leg along the way, life does throw us all a learning curve. Because he keeps it positive. Dr. Mcclintock is truly thankful for all of life's experiences thus far, whether it be from family, professors, patients, friends, or even horses. The time he worked at a horse farm, everyone and everything has played a role. Learning does not ever stop, ever. Now Dr. Mcclintock told me before our show today. If there's one thing I know for sure, it said I'm going to keep grinding it out every day so that I can hopefully make a positive impact on my profession and the people who care about me. Doctor Trace McClintock, a lifelong learner, for Life's Learning Curve. I'm Paul Hardt.
Speaker 2Today's podcast is not medical advice, but was meant for entertainment and slight educational purposes. Find Whiskey Docs on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play.
Speaker 8Our show is stitched together by producer Paul Hardt with assistance by Charlie Lyons, Chris Emmanuel, an s t dog. We're mixed by Heidi Cerner, technical director John Fike. As always music assistance by Riley Hardt. On this show. Special thanks to Trace McClintock, D. P. T. and all of the good people at Whiskey Docs podcast. out of, Austin, Texas Visit our website, life's learning curve.buzzsprout.com. Don't forget to choose the Like or Subscribe button. I'm Paul Hardt and we will be back soon with more stories from Life's Learning Curve. We're clear.
