The Breakaway Experience Podcast | Episode 1

Dr. Shana Clemmons shares her personal story of how she became a pelvic floor physical therapist. She talks about her active lifestyle and love for the outdoors. After breaking her wrist in high school and undergoing occupational therapy, she became interested in the therapy world. She pursued a career in physical therapy, specializing in orthopedics. Later, she started treating patients with pelvic health issues and realized the impact she could have on their quality of life. She fell in love with pelvic floor therapy and opened her own clinic called Breakaway Physical Therapy in 2015. The clinic specializes in pelvic health and also treats orthopedic conditions. Dr. Clemmons is passionate about mentoring other physical therapists in the field of pelvic health. She is grateful for her team and looks forward to further growth and success in her practice. Hi, welcome to Breakaway from Pain, our podcast with myself, Dr. Shana Clemmons. Today I would love to tell you a little bit more about me and my clinic and how I became a pelvic floor physical therapist. So I'm Shana and I have a wonderful family. I have four kids, an amazing husband, and we have dogs, crazy puppies. We are a really active family. We enjoy just being outside. We like to hike and bike and go fruit picking and we love to go to the beach. We also love to go skiing and snowboarding. So we are a really big outdoorsy family and enjoy just being together. Some other things about me, I love to read and I also enjoy doing triathlons. In 2011, I did an Ironman triathlon in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And also, my favorite color is purple. So when you come to the clinic, you'll notice that there are sprinkles of purple everywhere for the sheer fact of that it makes me happy and it makes me smile every day as I walk through my clinic. So years ago, I was snowboarding and it was in high school and I broke my wrist. And it ended up being a pretty bad break and I was put in a cast, a cast all the way up to my shoulder and then a month later, I got a shorter cast and came out of the cast and I was still in pain in my wrist. So I ended up going to occupational therapy and it was a really great experience. I had a lot of fun and I learned all these exercises and I got to play with all these fun toys and the best part about it was that at the end, my wrist felt great. And being young, I was just so appreciative that I didn't have any limitations. I was able to get my motion and my strength back and I knew it then wouldn't limit me in my future. So jumping forward many years as I'm trying to figure out what do I want to do, what do I like, what am I passionate about and I remembered being in OT and I remembered just how great it was and I just loved getting to know my therapist and again, she made it so much fun. And so I started to really search into the therapy world and when I learned more about physical therapy, I was just drawn to it. I loved that it incorporated the whole body. I loved that you would get to work with people for lots of different injuries. I just thought it was so cool. So did an internship and was like, yep, this is how I'm going to start my career and so I went to PT school and graduated and I got a staff job and I was working at an outpatient clinic. We saw a lot of different orthopedic issues, some different neuromuscular conditions, so like balance things, working with people after a stroke or Parkinson's disease, things like that and I was really, I was enjoying it. I was loving it. Then I was encouraged to see some patients for pelvic health issues and when I went to school, it was three years of PT school and I had one day of pelvic floor. So needless to say, I felt like I didn't feel qualified to be able to treat this even though we come out of school being able to help anyone and so the woman that I was working with at the time, she was like, don't worry, I'll teach you a couple things. I'll get you going and I started to learn a lot and I jumped into seeing patients for incontinence and I was doing my best and they were starting to get better and they came in and patients were saying, wow, you know, I can go to the store now and I'm not afraid that I'm going to leak or oh, I can go do my errands and I'm not stressing about where is the bathroom at every point and it just hit me how impactful these changes were in these people's lives. It was just a huge, huge quality of life factor. Also, I started having children myself and going through many pregnancies and many different birthing experiences. I was just amazed at what the body goes through and how we can be affected differently based on what happens. So needless to say, I totally fell in love with pelvic floor and just jumped right in. I continued to take more courses. I just wanted to learn as much as possible and grow because there's just so many different people that you can help when you kind of jump into the world of pelvic health. So jumping forward, my husband and I had, you know, always talked about having a clinic. He always said, hey, you're going to do this and I always said, oh, you know, we'll see. And, you know, they always say that, like, the stars align. I had so many signs, just, you know, patients saying, hey, when are you going to do this? When are you going to have your own thing? And it just, it really felt right. And my husband and I wanted to continue to grow our family and, you know, I really loved the idea of having a clinic that was ours and that my whole family could really be a part of. So we opened Breakaway Physical Therapy in 2015 and so naturally my clinic has a specialty in pelvic health as well as we treat orthopedics, you know, in addition because if you really want to help someone from a pelvic floor perspective, you need to make sure that you're not only zooming into the pelvic floor but that you're zooming out and looking at what's happening around the pelvis. So that was always important to me that we kind of took a comprehensive approach with our patients and I've just really, we've built upon it and have, you know, a pelvic floor team. We're able to impact so many patients and so many lives as well as I also enjoy mentoring physical therapists in the specialty of pelvic health because when I think back to how I started and how it took a lot to kind of go to these courses and put everything together and I didn't have a lot of support. I kind of just went at it on my own and so what I want for others is for them to be able to have that incredible support and to, you know, go into the world of pelvic health and not feel like they don't have anyone to ask their questions or clinically talk about cases. So it's very much a huge, huge passion of mine and again being a mom of four, I have lived firsthand so many different pelvic health challenges and, you know, I'm lucky to have an amazing team that has helped me work through different things. I couldn't, you know, thank them enough. All the different people that have been a part of my team over the years, it's been really, really incredible what we've grown. So just really, really happy to be able to be a part of the Crofton community and the pelvic floor world and looking forward to, you know, our further growth and success. And, you know, thanks for joining me today and just hearing my story of how I got to be where I am. We will be back soon.