I came to Tim with a pretty unique situation. I've had 13 surgeries by the age of 29. I've had 5 left knee surgeries including an ACL reconstruction, partial meniscectomies, a microfracture, bone spur removal, and a meniscal allograft. I've had 5 right elbow surgeries. I've had surgery on each hip to correct femeroacetabular impingement (both cam and pincer type) and to repair torn labrums. One of the hip surgeries even included a microfracture to repair a defect in my articular cartilage. In addition to all these surgeries, I have a propensity to grow scar tissue.
As you can imagine, all of these conditions caused considerable collateral damage. I had such poor mechanics for such a long time that my body became extremely stiff and unbalanced. I developed considerable back pain. I became really frustrated with almost all of the physical therapists I had seen because most of them simply aren't strong enough or skilled enough to handle the level of stiffness my body had reached. Most of them really can't handle a hip as stiff as mine. Keep in mind that I am 6' 2", 200 lbs. so you can imagine how heavy my leg is. I can't tell you how annoyed I'd get when I'd here a therapist complain about how heavy my leg is. To truly push my leg and hip around to help it regain serious range of motion, it would take serious strength, dexterity, knowledge of kinesiology and body mechanics, and leverage. Tim has all these abilities. Tim has gone through his own serious injuries so he has a unique perspective on the whole rehabilitation process. He too had a long road to recovery and went through the process of finding the right health care practitioners. And when you watch him work, you'll be amazed and inspired. You almost won't be able to believe what he himself went through.
A great example of Tim's skill is watching him work on lateral epicondylitis (also known as tennis elbow). This is an inflammation of the tendons on the outside of the elbow and it is extremely frustrating to recover from. Tim goes through this process where he has you move your fingers in order to find the correct forearm muscles (and thus the tendons at the end of those muscles). Then he goes about "stripping" the tendon and then through some other techniques in order to effectively create inflammation in the tendon. This is a good thing because this inflammation helps the tendon truly heal. This is the same effect that is the goal of other more expensive needle based therapies like Platelet Rich Plasma injections and Prolotherapy (both of which I have had). All of this takes great strength, dexterity, and skill. Frankly, after going through the needle based therapies, watching Time go through his process is so impressive.
I seriously wish I had met Tim much earlier on than I did because he has been such a positive force in the rehab process for my last slew of surgeries (I've had 6 within the last 12 months) and he has truly helped me progress much faster and much better than I would have otherwise.
Pros: It would take more than a few words to name them all.
Cons: It's hard to get on Tim Kelley's schedule.
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