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Anthony Nordan offered our Pledge of Allegiance and also introduced his guest, Matt Schroeder from Jaeger Realty. Dean Monke introduced our Student Athletes from M State, Crosby Aasness from Underwood and Brett Englemeier from Melrose, both sophomores. If I heard correctly, both of their fathers are dairy farmers and both of our guests played basketball and will not move on to baseball as pitchers.  There was a Rotary Minute Quiz administered based on articles ion the February Rotary Magazine, and President Ken remarked on a historical achievement of the group answering all questions correctly. Mark Bring was the first to brag or pay a fine, contributing for both missing the prior week and to tell us how good a student Crosby was in Underwood. Katie Johnson contributed to recognize a fellow Lake Region Healthcare employee as our speaker for the day. Hal Leland, attending virtually, contributed and thanked Dean for getting the students to and from the meeting. Brian Tjaden was proud of a daughter who was interviewed for a Rotary podcast on youth exchange. Keith, with us from Arizona, thanked Brian for helping out at Olson Furniture while Keith is on vacation and Keith's son had to be gone for a day. After brags and fines, Mark Bring reported on a flyer that is being put together to promote Rotary and hopefully identify new member prospects. Buzz took advantage of his physical therapy to invite and introduce John Gervais to talk to us about his work at Lake Region Healthcare in the physical, occupational and speech therapy department. John appreciated Buzz not limping up to the front of our meeting space to introduce him. John grew up in an eight-child household and his father was a dentist, a brother went to medical school, another brother went to dental school and a sister attended nursing school. John graduated from Fergus Falls High School in 1980 and then attended St. Cloud State for three years before being admitted into the Mayo Clinic's Physical Therapy School. He left that in 1985 and went back to St. Cloud State to get his undergraduate degree. Becoming a physical therapist is much more costly now, with school expenses in the $25,000 a year range; in addition, now you have to obtain a master's degree, although John wasn't sure what more has to be done to get that as he had to write and present a dissertation before an advanced degree was required. John's first job was in Fairbanks, Alaska but he was there for only four months before he realized that was going to be too cold and dark for him. Moving on he stopped in Breckenridge, Minnesota in 1985 and has not left the area since. John and wife Leigh have two children, Trevor who also works at Lake Region and Hannah who works for AMP Insurance. They have been blessed with five grandchildren. Physical therapy traces back to World War I, treating those disabled in the conflict; at that time the therapists were called rehabilitation aids. After World War II physical therapy became a profession. True but unfortunate, there have been a lot of advances in the profession by learning from those treated for injuries sustained on the battlefield. When John started at Lake Region, there were five people in the department; now there are 19 and a couple of physical therapy assistants. In the current staff, there are nine colleges represented and a lot of the therapists have identified specialties. There are also two part-time staff persons working at the YMCA. The staff represents over 300 years of experience in the fields of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. John's approach to therapy is straightforward, first identifying what is inflamed or flaring up, then restoring motion and joint movement, and then putting in place a strengthening regimen. The most important thing they do, in John's mind, is to educate a patient on how to take ownership of the process. John talked a little about blood flow therapy which he described as counterintuitive because you deprive a limb of all its oxygen for short periods of time to fool the body into generating a lactic acid response, which in turn stimulates growth hormone production. He also said that one of the more recent developments in the profession is awarding a doctorate in physical therapy (which allows a degree holder to order his/her own MRI's for example), but John isn't necessarily on board with the concept. |
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