What physical therapy do you do?

My name is Terry Shultz. I became a physical therapist in 1998 and have owned two physical therapy practices in Spokane and Kennewick, WA. I still run Balancing Act Physical Therapy, and also provide services in the North Franklin School District. I additionally provide hippotherapy at Therapeutic Riding of Tri Cities (TROT). I love helping others decrease pain and improve their quality of life. I have a mission to empower people to help themselves with exercise, hands-on therapy, and especially natural pain management alternatives. These are often used in physical therapy to supplement exercise and traditional therapy. My motto with Balancing Act Physical Therapy is “Helping You Take the Next Step.”

Why physical therapy?

As an adolescent I was drawn to the service industry. From babysitting, to dreams of being a doctor or perhaps an algebra teacher, I have always liked teaching and helping people. Later my intrigue with math and science and aptitude assessments led me to Gonzaga University in 1991 with a plan on becoming a mechanical engineer. However, during my early college experience, I was offered a work-study job by a physical therapist friend and neighbor as an aide in his Spokane Valley clinic. I quickly fell in love with this career track. I rather abruptly transferred to Eastern Washington University and completed my undergraduate Human Biology degree and finally my graduate Physical Therapy degree in 1998. Since then, I have worked with people of all ages. I love the feeling of seeing people heal.

Why start your own PT clinic in this tough private practice climate?

I have always wanted to do something more but never really knew what that looked like. I have gone full speed ahead a couple of times trying to get a successful physical therapy practice going and have it become my life’s work. Unfortunately, changes in health care with physicians employed by hospitals or large orthopedic groups always cut heavily into referrals and I never achieved sufficient volumes. I have been told on several occasions that these large hospitals and orthopedic groups expect PT referrals to remain in-house at their own clinics. They employ the physicians (at least the vast majority of them) and largely drive the referral model. They rarely educate you that you, as the patient, have the legal right to take that referral to any therapy practice of your choosing. Payment for services certainly is determined based on if that PT clinic is in or out of network with your insurance, but it is your choice. Despite starving for referrals and not having the marketing funds to do huge ads, radio spots, and other ways to reach people, I managed to earn the trust of several physicians through the years and got a few referrals here and there. Still, this was driven by my frequent visits and marketing efforts. It simply wasn’t enough.

I have heavily moonlighted for my whole therapy career with hospital work, home health agencies, pediatrics, and more …. but still I hemorrhaged money with expenses always heavily overshadowing income. I could no longer support business debt with personal retirement loans, home-equity lines, and any other way I could get finances. I still was unwilling to admit defeat. I would not admit failure.

What happened next, what has changed?

Enter chronic pain, a real villain. My severe back injury while catching a falling patient in July of 2019 brought me face to face with chronic pain. I had some left knee issues and a meniscus repair, a right elbow surgery, and small back strains that I always healed from, but not the degree of pain and functional mobility loss I soon would realize. I didn’t know something was really wrong at the time, but this is when I first experienced the sharp dagger-like stabbing pains down into my left leg. It wasn’t until about a year later that I would realize and accept the fact that I had herniated my 4th and 5th lumbar discs, really bad. I underwent chiropractic and physical therapy myself for a few months beginning in the summer of 2019 and it really did significantly help. I even had periods of time I was pain-free. Once this stopped and I failed to continue my very strict regimen of chiropractic adjustments and therapeutic exercise, it came cascading back into my life. Every little wrong move would give me days of severe pain. Even careful lifting of small gardening tillers became quite an obstacle and worsened my pain. I had been ignoring the reality I knew was there, but I figured that by ignoring it and not getting a real diagnosis by an orthopedic physician I could make it go away like any previous back strain I had experienced. Oh boy was I ever wrong. I had to get my head out of the sand and quit pretending I wasn’t hurt, and I mean really hurt this time. My expertise and medical knowledge could not bring me back to my previous health alone. After one such exacerbation of pain with a small rototiller lifting incident gardening during the Covid-19 pandemic, I hurt pretty bad for days afterward. I decided this is when things had to change. My life was not mine. “I am not old enough to have to deal with this” I had always told myself. “I can’t really be hurt this bad.” Deep down I already knew I was. Things I had loved doing with my family like camping, hiking, canyoneering, gardening, cycling, holding my grandchildren, and even working in the hospitals like I had for over 20 years, were too painful. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. SO, I finally went in for further evaluation. This is when an MRI that I did not get after my year previous lifting injury showed me why I had been in so much pain. See image. It was definitely not just a muscle strain or sciatica from my piriformis muscle pinching my nerve. It was severely bulging and herniated discs that were causing my nightmarish realization.