Academy of Neurologic Physical Therapy



Academy of Neurologic Physical TherapyHistorian Committee Inspirational ConversationInterviewee: Darcy Umphred, PT, PhD, FAPTAInterviewer: Britta SmithDate of Interview: 2013Transcription of Full Audio InterviewStart of Transcription: Timestamp 00:00:00End of Transcription: Timestamp 00:47:46Interviewer (I): This is Britta Smith, historian of the Neurology section and here with the woman of the street interview with Darcy Umphred who I happened to find during a Vestibular SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting. Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed, Dr. Umphred and you’ve already started on the first question!Darcy Umphred (DU): Oh, I was just going to say that I got my physical therapy degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. I went back and got my master’s in science at Boston University and then got my Doctorate at Syracuse University. It’s been a process trying to understand how the mind, how our nervous system processes. Once you understood kind of synergic programming, you understood the functioning of the sensory and motor system. Then I went in master’s degree and I took a lot of courses in both biomechanics and that along with advanced occupational therapy courses and perception. So, I added the perceptual component to the nervous system. Then doctorate was in theories of learning, I wanted to figure out the higher-level thought processing. It all gets back to how does the patient exhibit the signs they exhibit.(I): So, when did you earn your official degree in physical therapy?(DU): I graduated in ’68.(I): Okay, so what types of theoretical bases did you kind of immerge into the clinic with that maybe have been blown away since then?(DU): The one thing I found when I was in PT school was that you were learning approaches and you were learning PNF and NDT and Brunnstrom’s approach and Margaret Rood’s approach and that kind of thing. For me, it was the first time in my PT education that I could say, ah, there are options! I guess, I wouldn’t say I was a skeptic, but I just couldn’t buy that somebody having a stroke in New York has terribly a different nervous system than somebody that had a stroke in England. So, if the nervous systems are comparable, then why wouldn’t two approaches be options for me to treat? Why couldn’t I mix and match them? My goal, which I could remember my therax teacher laughing at me because, “So, what do you want to do?” I said, I want to develop an integrative approach based on science because I just don’t buy that I have to use this cook book and if I use this half of this cook book and half of that cook book, the patient is going to die! That’s kind of how you were taught. People truly believed that they had to do it exactly. I just couldn’t buy that and when I got to know many of those people, I got to know Margaret Rood, I got to know Maggie Knott, and I realized that they used words to describe what they did, but what they did was much more than their words. When you looked at it from a visual spatial perspective, they did a lot of the same things. They just used different words to describe it. I’ve had so many wonderful clinical experiences and some of them so far beyond our understanding of neuroscience. I spent my life trying to ground experiences, but it just leads to more experiences. I just kept thinking that people, colleagues when they say now that we are into understanding neuroscience and motor learning, and then they’ll criticize those people from the past and they say, “they didn’t understand motor learning and motor control! They did the wrong things.” And I go, if you watched any of them, they weren’t doing the wrong things. They didn’t have the theory. They tried to use the science in their date to explain what they did, but they were master clinicians and their patients got better and they got better quickly. They shifted their handling, their control of the patient and very much empower the patient to their own movement very quickly because that came natural to all of them. Even though they didn’t know the “theory,” they were practicing the theory we know today, which I find very exciting. We have teachers from the past and we need to acknowledge them because they gotten us to where we are. They started it off. When I started an integrative approach, I was teaching in Temple University after I got my masters in 70’ and my colleagues there go, “you got to teach us what you are teaching your students because they are creating change in the clinic and we don’t understand.” Because they were into these approaches and I taught the students to think and apply what could be the science behind. We didn’t have efficacy studies; we had science. The more you could ground what you did in science, the more credibility we had as a profession. That was when I taught my first Con Ed course. It was at Temple and I was like 24 or 25, you know. That kind of evolution of teaching around the world, Con Ed courses just kind of arose from that. It still goes back to each patient that each patient has something to teach us. Once I got out of my PT program, and even though I got a master’s and a Doctorate, I met many wonderful teachers, many wonderful lecturers and presenters, I think the true teachers that I’ve have had have been the patients because their bodies tell you exactly what they need. (I): Do you recall one patient or a couple of patients in particular that kind of helped you come to that aha moment? (DU): I started working with individuals post head trauma right away. I was at a county hospital and most of the people there with head trauma were on their respiratory ward because many of them were trached(had a tracheostomy). They were there for maintenance until they died. What PT would do is ROM and then we delegated ROM daily to the aid. That was standard of practice. This sounds very strange, but I put my hands on the first client that I had, and this gentleman was post 9 months catastrophic head injury, brain on the cement please put it back in the vault kind of a thing. He had two huge decubiti on his chest because he was oscillating between the vestibulospinal tract and the reticulospinal tract. I went to put my hands on him and in my head, I heard, “get me out of here.” That’s a whole different story of intuition and I’ve tried to study intuition for the last 35 years to understand it because if we could teach it, then we could teach people to become masters versus they either have it or they don’t have it. Anyway, I couldn’t not work with him, I mean it was so shocking to me. The first thing I realized was that, I had to wake him. I had to wake up his nervous system. It was agitated, and I needed to do something that would dampened it but allow it. All I can think of, was cold water. Maggie Knott was dumping with post anything 32 degrees of ice chips. I said, I can’t do that. I can start off at 78 degrees and then I could add ice chips to the bath in the morning every day. As soon as we finished, I put him on the mat and worked with movement so that I could warm him up. I think we got down to 68 degrees. Now I have Raynaud’s syndrome, so it was as painful to him as it was to me. But I think it calmed the cutaneous receptors, the pain receptors and everything that was activating his cutaneous system and his reticular system and making the limbic system go crazy. It calmed that, but it also brought him more to a level of consciousness. He had a lot of times where he spontaneously made huge jumps. I can remember one time he, his name was Cliffy, and I said Cliff, do you want to get on the mat? And he goes, “no, I don’t want to get on the mat.” Now he had not spoken a word and he all of the sudden had spontaneous speech. And I said, okay you don’t want to get on the mat today, what do you want to do? And you know, he just kept talking as I heard about 300 pills run across the ward on the floor because the nurse was walking with all of her pills and she just dropped her pills and they were everywhere, but I just wanted to stay very calm because I wanted him to keep going from that. He always had speech after that. Maybe 4 months into the treatment with him, no maybe before that. Probably about a month into the treatment, anyway he was just beginning to come out, a doctor, a very famous orthopedic surgeon came out because his insurance company wanted to evaluate him. He pulled him up to stand, the kid was up on his toes and arched in extension, you know. The doctor said, “we need to do heel cord lengthening. We need to release the adductors, we need to make him a functional wheelchair person.” And my doctor at this county hospital gave me the letter and asked me, “Darcy, what do you think?” Well he doesn’t have any contractures, anywhere. He has full range; you can’t throw him into standing with that kind of pressure on the ball of his feet without him going into strong support reactions, but you don’t need to go surgically release him. You just need to not treat into that. The doctor asked to write the letter and the reasons why and then he signed the letter and refused the surgery. 3 months later, the doctor came back, the orthopedic surgeon came back, and Cliff was ambulating fairly independently in the parallel bars by then, and the doctor said, “he can’t do that.” Then he did some perceptual testing and I had been working intuitively on him, learning about where his body is in space, so I had him prone and had him mirrored his legs. I knew that the sensory motor system needed to be reintegrated after such a long time, but the doctor kept saying, “he can’t do this, he can’t do that!” He finally said, “I’ll show you” and he took him back up on the ward and he injected him with Valium IV, which suppressed the higher center and of course his pathology came immediately back. The doctor said, “I’d really like to hire you because I really think I can convince you that early surgery is the only way to treat these patients.” And I thought, we’re coming from an entirely different paradigm and I was only 21 and I knew what we did as a PT was a very different paradigm than what the doctor did as doctors. It took me a long time to understand, to understand him saying “he can’t do that, he can’t walk” and I’m looking at Cliff walking and wondering if there is something wrong with my cognitive processing or isn’t walking one foot in front of the other? Isn’t he doing that, so why are you telling me he can’t do that? That was my beginning adventure with head injury individuals and I would say in my professional life probably maybe 75-100% individuals with head injuries have woken from therapy from working with them. (I): That’s amazing.(DU): It’s a very emotional, highly and I don’t want to say spiritual because that has a lot of connotations, but when somebody goes from a lower level of consciousness to this plane of reality and you are guiding them there, and then they are there, it’s a beautiful experience and you feel very privileged to have had that opportunity even if you only know them for 30 minutes of your life. You know, I can remember all those patients. It really has taught me how much our profession can offer to individuals. Doesn’t matter if it’s wellness, all the way to severe trauma. We just have to be open to allowing them to show us what they need, and then we have the tools to help them. (DU): Want to know why I was so committed to three STEP? (I): Ahmm.(DU): It was because in 2003, I got kicked out of the reference committee because I wanted to bring to the floor of the house the ICF model. They kicked me out of the reference committee and said, “physical therapists are never going to use that model. We use the Nagi model and that model is inappropriate for us” and it was funny because they kicked me out of the reference committee. I thought, okay maybe we need to go about this in a different way, you know. (I): So how did you do it? (DU): Well we had three STEP, big international conference and bring everybody across the world and then show us how far behind we are. Not in a negative way, I always thought the word patience isn’t appropriate because it insinuates that there is something wrong. They do have something wrong, but we do have something wrong with us, you know. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be empowered to assist us in understanding how to help us. But anyway, III STEP did it! It didn’t take a couple of years until the APTA says “oh dear, we need to embrace the ICF model” which I found kind it of humorous. (I): So, are you planning to go to IV STEP?(DU): You know, I don’t know. It really depends on when and I’m about ready to make a transition from writing the kinds of textbooks, you know writing the professional literature to writing about life experiences. I’ve had a lot of health care experiences that I think the first book will relate on how to empower individuals to their own health and their responsibility of that health. I mean, I have many funny stories about me and doctors. I have maybe 10 specialists right now and not one of them has ever been able to give me a diagnosis, but I got multiple systems I mean I’m not on dominos, but you know. I go, okay you guys say that my health is a 3 or a 4, but there’s mind body and spirit so if my physical health is a 3 or 4, my mind and my spirit are 10s and I add them up and I get, you know, 24 and I divide it by three, and I go maybe I’m an 8. Okay, neat! (I): Well I got to tell you, the first thing I noticed was, who’s that lady talking to Sue Whitney wearing the rocker shoes, so tell me what do you think about the rocker shoes? (DU): I have a disease. I have it because I have a clotting disorder, so I’ve had lots of permanent clots. I’ve had internal neuropathies and I’ve had peripheral neuropathies and I think you just live with those things. When my balance was going, so if you put me on the SMART, you know and took away vision, I just fell! I couldn’t compensate and then I developed Meniere’s disease then you add the vestibular component to it, and I go okay, my eyes are not going to be able to compensate for that. When I saw the shoes I go, that would force me all the time to balance.(I): To work on it.(DU): You know, I used a cane for four, five years.(I): No cane today!(DU): I was telling Sue was that as a neuroscientist what I find fascinating is I feel my whole foot in my head. I have full awareness of my image of where my foot is as I shift my weight on my feet except when I take my shoes off; I don’t have any feeling. (I): Isn’t that interesting?(DU): So, my brain has rebuilt my somatosensory body image from my knees down. On a cognitive level, I have no gaps, I don’t have any voids. I know intellectually that I can’t feel the skin, but when I’m walking and I’m moving, I feel my foot as much as you feel your foot which I find fascinating. It’s that kind of study, because I’ve been very fortunate to live in this body that I live in. I accommodate it and I completely refuse let physicians take that medical diagnosis. For example, I have a flaccid bladder. When you say, “why do you have a flaccid bladder?” Probably because I have that disease leading to turner’s syndrome. So, I’m at the urologist and it wasn’t because I was having a problem, I just didn’t feel drainage was fast. It wasn’t, because I just relaxed, but the doctor’s response after he did all the studies and they inflated my bladder to like 1500 cc and then just stopped. There was no muscle activity at all. He came in and said, “your bladder is useless.” I said, I don’t think so. Isn’t the bladder a storage container? He says “yes,” and I say my bladder stores fluid, he says “well, yeah.” As long as I got control of the external sphincter, I’m good! Because as long as I empty it, frequently enough so I don’t end up injuring myself, it’s as good as bladder as anybody’s else’s! You know, it’s been an adventure. I could give you many, many stories about doctors. Probably the best story was when I was in ICU, and I literally bled out into my abdomen. I had a pelvic fracture and literally broke my pelvis in two places so I’m in ICU and I look like I’m about 14 months pregnant. Anyway, about two weeks the doctor who was the primary physician in the ICU comes in and shuts the door and pulls the chair over to my husband and I and goes “okay, I know what is medically wrong with you and I know what we did medically, and I know you still can’t be here. So, how are you here?” And I said, there’s a lot more to health and wellness that medicine can provide. When it’s time to go, it will be time to go and that’s alright.(I): And it’s not your time yet.(DU): It’s not my time yet, you know. ---TIMESTAMP 00:23:00---(I): So, most therapists know you as the author, “The Book (Neurological Rehabilitation).” What lead to that?(DU): I was told in my first teaching job when I was teaching in Temple University in the 1970, my colleagues go, “you need to write a book that’s an integrative approach that really looks at the science of the nervous system versus a technique” and I was a textbook dyslexic, so the thought of writing a book practically drove me to drape. I’m going, a book? What do you mean a book? After I finished my doctorate, and I got my doctorate in 78’, for the next couple of years, I kept thinking about that book. There’s no book there, there’s no book out there. What if I create a book that was a model? Then lots of books could be written. Then you at least have the model to write off of it. Maybe you don’t agree with all of the things that are in that book, and that’s fine, but you at least have a now framework to write an integrative book. So, I decided in 1980, I was going to talk to my publisher. I had this commitment to the profession to do that. I don’t remember if it was CSM or annual, but they came to me and they said, “we would like you do this 3-book series and we would like you to be the editor of the neuro one.” Obviously, everything is going with that kind of coming together, I started conceptualizing the book. Then what I did was to look for colleagues that I thought were master clinicians, but also scientists.(I): So, who came to mind for that first edition?(DU): A lot of the authors that are still authors in the book. I mean, Jane Sweeney did the chapter on neonatology. Chris Nelson and other people have stepped up to the plate. Each chapter, what was funny was at least two of us and we had only 35 authors in the beginning, only 2 of us had PhDs. Over the evolution of that book, everyone has PhDs and it’s because those master clinicians are masters because they love to learn. Going on and getting more information is just a process that we all went through. There all pretty much leaders in the field. I think it’s because they’ve really have come from a strong clinical base. They are not researchers, and I hope education won’t get to the point that people only think research versus master clinician because I think as we look at efficacy and clinical based practice, the only place we are ever going to grow is if people discover things in the clinic. Researchers, I being one, can then do research on those concepts that they have found. But if people in the clinic are only bound to treat only treating based on evidence, they will never discover anything, and our field won’t grow. I strongly believe that you look for the science, you look for the evidence, you don’t just randomly do things. But I also believed very on in my heart as a young graduate that if what I was doing right, looked right, that is looked like normal and the patient was enjoying what I was doing, and they were taking over what I was doing, and I was enjoying it whether I understood the science behind that, it had to be in the right area. I had to be doing something right whether I understood why I was right and I spent my whole life trying to figure out those answers. But now I can very easily say, well if it looks right, it’s effortless. And if it’s effortless, it’s falling in the domain of normal movement, so it is right. Now we have the science behind why it’s right and refine the why as far as type of practice, repetition of practice, disassociation of practice, disassociating cognition from motor. My real love since early on has been the limbic system. I felt like the limbic system played a key role in motor and even as a young person I felt that I had to make that system go neutral, before I could evaluate motor. If someone is angry, you have this specific type of tone, if someone is depressed, you have other kinds of tone. Motor tone that is being driven by the limbic system. So even in the first edition, I had a chapter on the limbic system. The first five editions, the publisher would send the book out for review. I would get back, “we teach limbic system in the neuro course, we don’t need a chapter.” Then I write, another chapter because I didn’t get it across yet! I haven’t gotten it across that this is a really important system and that it drives motor just as much as motor drives motor. If we don’t separate, we will never get efficacy. We never establish good evidence because part of the behavior is being driven by an entirely different system, but we’re calling it “motor.” It’s only been the last five years that this whole limbic system has been discovered. (I): Discover, I like how you use that!(DU): You know, boy! Maybe we need to understand it. At annual, somebody actually presented on the role of the limbic system and I kind of chuckled. You know, it’s taken a long for us to get there, but you know we are evolving. I’ve told colleagues, do you want to be a visionary or do you want to be a leader, because it’s hard to be both. You are out there making with your little hole, making a groove as a visionary. It’s the leaders that will identify the groove and then they will know where to go. If you want to lead, you know leading, you want to stand up and lead. You probably can’t be out as a visionary at the same time. (I): So, are you a gardener?(DU): I am! I was given the great honor being made a fellow and I’ve always wondered why because my leadership roles have always been backwards. I started at the national level then I went to the state level and then I went to the local level. My opinion of leadership was when they needed someone to step in, I was always willing. What I love is being a visionary. It’s saying where we are going, why we are going there. It takes a lot of energy taking the masses. It’s really hard not to get caught up in that. I just don’t value getting caught in this life, I rather be much freer. Now, a very close friend of mine, Carol Davis, everyone sees Carol being out there trying to ground complimentary approaches and alternatives and that’s threatening to many of us. She will be the first to tell you, that my life experiences have driven me much farther beyond her life’s experiences, and yet I’ve chosen to be perceived as a grounded scientist because it makes people comfortable. Then you can share, and people will be open as they can be to sharing. Some people will get a lot, some won’t get a lot. I have to respect the right of being open as much as they are comfortable to being open. It’s been a wonderful adventure. (I): So, what’s your craziest idea that has either come to fruition or you think might be proved or recognized in the future?(DU): My craziest idea?(I): I don’t know, you seem like a woman who is thinking out there!(DU): Well, I think that health and wellness and healing is based on a lot more than what we see today. There are many planes of consciousness, you know I have my beliefs. I think many of the patients I have treated have just been on a different plane of consciousness. The only thing I did was relax enough to go to it, find them, without talking, ask them if they want to come back, and if they can, bring them to consciousness. There is nothing more complex than that, but it’s certainly out of parameter of understanding. I think that higher planes of consciousness and I’ve had many experiences where you might think I need to be hospitalized because I can remember one time, I got on a plane. I had gone to Boston one time because of alumni, and I sat on this plane and this gentleman, was in the window seat and I was in the middle. He goes, “do you know you are radiating colors?” and I go, yes. Yes, where did this “yes” come from? It was almost like I stepped out of me and watched me interact with this gentleman from Boston to Philadelphia. He went, “I don’t believe in God,” and I said, that’s hard for me to believe that. You’re native American. Then I started rambling on native American heritage and their belief system on which I did not know. Anyway, we landed in Philadelphia and I am in my office next morning writing neuro notes to teach neuro, and he calls me at 11 in the morning, and he says, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since 8 in the morning, and all I knew was that your name was Darcy Umphred and that you taught at the Temple University!” I said, I’m amazed you even got to me! He said, “You know, I talked to my wife about everything you said on the plane and we stayed up all night talking about it, and we watched the sun come up and we knew, there was a God.” A part of me was jealous because he was in such a spiritual high and I was writing neuro notes back to the basics here. You know, I’ve had many, many experiences like that, that if you ask me, I just would love to understand how we’ve been given the honor to be part of this. That’s kind of my craziest idea, if you ask me. The scientist in me would like to understand the process. The intuitive in me just buys that these things are, and every time I experience one, I just them in this little folder “don’t understand it,” but they happen to me most of the time in front of groups of people. I haven’t had the luxury of saying, it didn’t happen, which is a good luxury that you can use as a scientist. That never happened because you don’t have the efficacy to show that that it’s possible, so obviously it didn’t happen. When it happens in groups in front of people, it’s hard to say that it didn’t happen. The fact that I don’t understand how it happened or what happened, it’s just so beyond our understanding and yet we are involved in something that is wonderful. We are in a wonderful profession, because we are in a profession that should be empowering people to their own health. The western medicine can help them, you know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for western medicine. I finally asked my hematologist because you know, I have this genetic clotting disorder along with the bleeding factor, so it’s kind of not understandable by medicine, I said “why am I coming to you for osteoporosis?” I was four and a half standard deviation below the norm, I was four and a half standard deviation above the norm in 1990 and I was an active martial artist. I got into the martial arts to study what makes a master. I didn’t know how I learned what I learned to treat patients. I said, maybe if I go in and try to relearn how you become a master in an entirely alien, the opposite of what we do, because in the martial arts you either direct energy coming to you back on the person, or you actually deflect it, but what we do is combine energies and empower the patient as a whole. I started doing that, and it’s been a wonderful adventure and then I had to stopped because I had this clotting disorder. So, I’m asking my hematologist, why am I coming to you for osteoporosis? Her response to me is, “I’m the doctor of record that gave it to you.” I go, that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean your field, is laying that on you? She believes in doctor patient boundaries, and she’s really opening up. I said okay, we have to take the other half of the puzzle. Osteoporosis death, osteoporosis death. I’ll take the osteoporosis. You’ve kept me alive for the last 14 years. So, you have to take that on, at the same time. Now, what time of doctor treats osteoporosis? “Well an endocrinologist.” No problem, I already got one of those! This life adventure has been fascinating, you know? Clinically as well as this last twenty-year ride. (I): I understand you’re a proud mother and grandmother. Well first of all, how many children did you have?(DU): Two sons.(I): When you had your two sons, did their birth, development, and growth change how you were a therapist?(DU): Oh, absolutely. They taught me, you know I taught development for a few years. I was 29 when I had my first son and first time I started teaching I was 24. For five years, and I was already teaching Con Ed by then, post professional work. What my older son taught me very quickly was that children come in to this world in flexion, they’re biased. They spend the first month, or two months extending versus they’re working on flexion, which was the process at that time was “they’re working on flexion, that’s why they are in flexion” versus they are not working flexion, they are already biased to flexion. If a child comes into the world and doesn’t have that biased, gravity and their vestibular systems are going to bias them into extension and they are just going to be extending without the flexion. He taught me that in 76’ when he was an infant. That was long before it was evidence-based to understanding. And I took pictures of our kids probably every few days. I can remember one time looking at a picture of my old son walking off a parked bench, except he walked off the parked bench because he was in heel strike in mid-air on one foot as he was pushing off the one. I am looking at this picture and I’m going, there’s something wrong with this. Yet by the time he hit the ground, he had squatted and stood up and if you looked at the sequence of these pictures, he was at heel strike. This was a hundredth of a millisecond before his nervous system knew, so that was really wrong. He didn’t have any compression; the heel didn’t hit. He got traction. So, as he was coming down the heel strike still stays more in extension, and the swing phase leg is more biased to flexion and he is so concentrated in his head and you know what he’s doing, he’s running around his head, “what’s happening, what’s happening? Have I ever done this before? What does this mean, what does this mean?” By the time he got to the ground, and he wasn’t very far off the ground because he walked off a parked bench, he eccentrically caught himself and he stood up. The motor system went on pilot, he figured he was falling, and he knew what to do in hundreds of milliseconds. In hundreds of milliseconds, he is doing that. When he gets up, his face is in this concentrated look and then all of the sudden, this huge smile on his face, that “aha moment” and then he went and jumped off that barked bench for another 40 minutes. One after the other, after the other. I HAD NO idea until I saw that picture. I truly believe that picture was given to us, because there was no way I could have caught that hundreds of a millisecond by pressing click on the camera. That was a gift that was given to us by the world. My kids, they’ve taught me so much. I can remember my oldest son, when into my office, both children when to the university I was teaching, and he comes into my office and he goes, “you know when you look at the energy around people and they kind of have holes in them or indentations, it isn’t right? The patterns aren’t right.” I looked to him and go: no, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking. “Sure, you do mom! I’ve watched you correct that all my life when you treat your patients.” Is he my teacher? You know, and the younger one is the same. We’re very proud of our sons. They are very young to be successful. One’s a lawyer, but he wanted an entrepreneurship law of practice. Now it is growing faster than he could expect it. He goes, “Mom, I want people to go into my law practice and feel like they are at home. Not like they go to a lawyer’s office.” I go, well geez, Jeff. Then you need to have fresh bake something when they walk in. “Would you do that?” And I say, sure! I’ll make cookie dough for you. I’ve been making cookie dough since for the last seven years and that’s one of the things he’s known for. His clients know when they go into his law office, they are going to get fresh warm cookies. (I): I imagine that really changes their interactions with him.(DU): Yes, there is something safe and secure. We have four wonderful grandchildren. One of them is five now, and our older son and wife had a little girl and will be two years this April. My younger son and his wife had identical twin boys that August. They are identical. People say, “how can you tell the difference?” Somebody asked me that today. You know, they feel different. The essence of them feels different. I don’t know if with my sense, I am feeling energies. I know because I sense this one’s Lex and this’s one is Cam. I was very concerned about them because they were in the same sac and separated by just that film. Their umbilical cords were very close together. They were very, very high risks of having problems. So, I talked to them every night when they were in utero. Lex was supposed to be the bigger one, one pound bigger, so I talked to Lex, make sure you share the food with his brother, and when they were born, Lex weighed six pounds and Cam weighted seven. (I): You facilitated that sharing spirit early.(DU): I find it fascinating. The scientist in me looks at things like that and says, wow. When we say we have to have evidence-based, you know there is just so much more to learn than what we have evidence for! I would never want anyone to ever take that love for learning that I when I graduated from PT school away from any recent graduate because I think that is what will make our field evolve. Then we can go wherever we want to go. We have this huge arena that we can go into, you know as long as we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, narrow ourselves. (I): I really, really appreciate you taking time to talk to me this evening. Just for the record, it’s January 23rd, 2013, here at combined sections meeting in San Diego. It’s really been a pleasure.(DU): Well, it’s my pleasure. I’ve had many, many stories.(I): You certainly do. ................
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