Pain relief

MOSES LAKE — Getting hurt on the job is no fun. Besides the injury itself, you might have to take days, weeks, even months off work, while collecting a fraction of your regular paycheck. There are doctor visits, bureaucratic hassles, and what seems like enough paperwork to use up a national forest. And when you’ve exhausted all your physical and psychological energy, sometimes it still hurts. 

“When you have an injured worker that has been off work, and they're dealing with pain and it's been three months or more, that pain usually becomes chronic pain,” said Bobbi Meins, business and program development director for Pacific Rehabilitation Services, which opened its office in Moses Lake a couple of weeks ago. 

Pacific Rehabilitation specializes in return-to-work therapy for workers who have been hurt on the job and can’t stop hurting after about three months, Meins said. The system is an approach known as SIMP, for Structured Intensive Multidisciplinary Program, and includes medical, physical and occupational therapy, psychology and behavioral health and vocational counseling. Patients undergo a 20-day program in groups of seven.  

“(Patients) come in the morning, they have occupational therapy and physical therapy. They take a break, come in (a classroom) for a couple of hours, do classes, maybe see one of our counselors, take a break for lunch, come back for one more class, and then physical therapy again,” Meins said. “It’s really geared at getting that core strength back.” 

Taking patients in a group allows them to reinforce each other in the process, said Clinic Coordinator Susie Soto. 

“There's six other people, and they're coming in like when you start the first day of school,” Soto said. “But then when they find out that there's other people that are also in the same boat, they start talking to each other, they start encouraging each other … And now, they are laughing and joking around with each other. They're in pain, because that's what they're here for, but they're sharing the pain.” 

“They realize they're not the Lone Ranger,” Meins said. 

The thing about chronic pain, Meins explained, is that it’s controlled by a neurological gate at the base of the spine that can either let pain signals through to the brain or stop them. 

“A lot of things open that gate, such as stress or lack of sleep, not eating correctly, not sitting correctly, not exercising, which increases your pain,” Meins said. “You can learn, through meditation, through getting fit, through really focusing on your core muscles, to reduce that stress and thus reduce the pain.” 

The physical therapy part is pretty straightforward. The equipment is nothing fancy; there are some treadmills and exercise bikes and there’s a physical therapist on staff to help with exercises. 

“We of course modify everything, because everybody's injuries are a little bit different, so we need to make sure it's tolerable,” the therapist said. “We do things like stretching and strengthening. It's mostly about getting movement back, because a lot of people aren’t free to move when they get injured, but moving is how we live life. We need to be able to move.” 

Occupational therapy focuses on things like fine motor skills and body mechanics, like the safe way to push or pull a heavy object or manipulate nuts and bolts.  

“People think of the word occupation as your job, but occupational therapists talk about the occupations of life,” the physical therapist said. “Work is the main thing for Labor and Industries, but it extends to our occupation as a mother, or occupation as somebody who plays golf.” 

The psychological side isn’t to be ignored either. Pacific Rehabilitation has counselors to help patients cope with their situation. 

“You can imagine, if you can't go back to work, how that impacts your family, your finances,” Meins said. “Depression and anxiety are huge for these patients, so putting them with a therapist (who is) listening, teaching them how to relax, how to do mindfulness, to let your body sort of relax and not get stressed out. A lot of people are afraid to go back to work because they're afraid they're going to get hurt again. It’s a scary thing.” 

Moses Lake’s facility is Pacific Rehabilitation’s third. The company has been operating on the west side for 40 years, Meins said, and has centers in Everett and Puyallup. There was a center years ago in Wenatchee as well, Meins said, and a SIMP clinic in Spokane closed about seven years ago, Meins said, leaving a need in the area.  

“We were asked by vocational counselors and physicians to come to the east side and Moses Lake, when you look at the east side, is smack in the middle,” Meins said. “It was great (setting up business in Moses Lake), much easier than in a big city. Everybody has been very supportive.” 

    The occupational therapy section of Pacific Rehabilitation Centers’ Moses Lake facility. Occupational therapy goes beyond just the workplace and extends whatever people love to do, staff said.
  

    Pacific Rehabilitation Centers’ Administrative Assistant Erika Garza shows one of the treadmills in the clinic’s physical therapy department. Most of the physical therapy the clinic does is exercises tailored to the individual patient’s injuries.