MedStar NRH Rehabilitation Network

I ruptured my left achilles tendon completely and had surgery in mid January and was in search of a place for rehab. Being that this was my first ever surgery and major sport accident (was playing volleyball when my tendon popped), I had no idea what to expect and what kind of road I’ll be headed down in terms of recovering. I knew I wanted to be back to on to the court again, but with the condition of my tendon, I didn’t see how that was possible… well… at the time. After all, a ruptured achilles tendon is one of the worst injuries an athlete can get, so I wanted to make sure I could get the best possible rehab that I could.
The first place I went to, and I don’t even remember the name anymore, but it was suggested by my surgeon, wasn’t good. The physical therapist (PT) didn’t care to look at the prescription my doctor wrote up for the rehabilitation, but instead, just started doing her own thing. To me, that’s equivalent to a doctor prescribing Asprin and the PT giving me Tylenol… not the same thing buddy. So I ditched that place after one visit and decided to find a different place. The doctor’s script also called for Aquatics, which turns out is very hard to do, simply because not a lot of rehabilitation centers have a pool to offer for that. So in comes Medstar National Rehabilitation Network, Germantown MD.
Being that it’s Medstar, I was in-​network, and being that it’s in Germantown, It’s only 10 minutes from my place of work in Gaithersburg, I had to give this place a try. I made an appointment. I was paired up with Michael Hirshenson, Doctorate of Physical Therapy. He’s relatively young, below the age of 30, but really knows his stuff. You can read up on his short bio listed at the Germantown NRH webpage. Anyway, right off the bat, he examined me and reviewed the script the doctor had written up and explained to me what made sense to him and what didn’t and why. All of it made sense and he was very clear and answered any questions I had. He also explained how I was going to progress with my certain injury and what to expect and what not to expect. He gave me a tour and showed me the pool for the aquatic section of the therapy that was noted in the script and told me his honest opinions on it with me. He felt that I may not need it since they have a Zero Gravity Treadmill and that it can do everything a pool can, but better. At the end, he showed me on an iPad with an app all the muscles that were atrophied that we needed to get strong again. I felt extremely confident that I was going to be in the right hands.
The Zero Gravity Treadmill is just pure awesome. I started on the machine with only 20% of my body weight (body weight can be adjusted from full to almost zero) to get me to go through the motions of walking, since I haven’t done so for a month due to the injury and being in a cast and boot. Among that, we did other exercises too. On top of that, he and his assistant used an iPad to record me walking in order to show me what it was that I was doing wrong and where I needed to get to.
It has been 3 full months of just about 2x/​week of seeing Michael and it has been awesome. With his guidance, I’m ahead of my progress by weeks and weeks. However, this is also because I do my homework as instructed. Now I’m reduced to 1 session per week and I can feel that I’m getting stronger, all thanks to Michael and NRH. I 100% recommend Michael to anyone looking for rehabilitation.