This month as we prep for back to school season, we turn the spotlight on our patient Marianela, a pre-kindergarten teacher from Jersey City. Marianela is also a business owner where she creates soaps, lotions, lips balms, and body butters with natural ingredients. With fifteen years of teaching under her belt, Marianela’s body has experienced its fair share of bending down, lifting, and helping her young students. This, along with the manual labor of mixing product, carrying batches, and packaging for her bath & body business, led to a lot of stress and pain in Marianela’s shoulders resulting in poor shoulder posture and osteoarthritis on both sides.
With difficulty doing her daily activities such as driving, and even sleeping or lying on her back, Marianella originally started going to Physical Therapy at a clinic near her school in Jersey City. However, with the long commute to her home in Old Bridge, she was not able to keep up with her sessions. Looking for a clinic closer to home, her co-worker who also treats at Alliance Orthopedics, recommended that she see our shoulder specialist Dr. Antonio. “I’m here telling people to ‘leave your worries under the palm tree’ (her slogan for her bath & body company), but here I am stressed out in the kitchen while I’m in pain trying to make these products.” It was time for Marianela to take care of herself.
“I feel great now! Alliance Orthopedics inpidualized my treatment plan and helped me get back to what I love to do. ”
Dr. Antonio informed her that with the many years of teaching, driving and making her bath & body products, she was left with weak rounded shoulders, including a protruded clavicle. She started treating in the Matawan office at Alliance Orthopedics in February where Marianela was able to consistently come to her sessions. Dr. Antonio had her focusing on stretching her shoulders, which consisted of exercising with stretch bands, using the TRX,
manipulation, and icing. It wasn’t until Marianela saw our medical doctor, Dr. Menon, that she noticed how much her pain had improved thanks to Dr. Antonio’s customized plan of care. Dr. Menon happily informed her that she did not need any injections and was cleared to be discharged from therapy. As a result, Marianela is now stress free and is able to make her lotions and soaps without any pain.
She is able to complete her daily activities that she was struggling with before such as opening doors, driving, sleeping, and most importantly, creating her bath & body products! “I take the stretching exercises Dr. Antonio gave me and do them before I start mixing…I always make sure to stretch now before I do any extraneous activities and it has helped me a lot.’ Thank you Marianela, for not only going the natural way with your business, but also with your treatment to get back to what you love doing!