Necks, knees and needles

At Creston's PhysioWorks, many different treatments are utilized

— Brian Lawrence photos

Mike Foy’s father was a physician, and this influenced his career choice. He knew he didn’t want to deal with being constantly available, as doctors often must be.

“Early in life, I decided that I didn’t want the on-call (life) and I wondered what I could do in the medical fields,” said Foy. “It was interesting to me, especially anatomy.”

As an athlete, Foy knew people who were injured and visiting physiotherapy clinics for treatment. After surveying some clinics himself, he ventured into the field of physiotherapy, studying at the University of Alberta. After working in Calgary for a couple of years, Foy and his wife, Candace—also a physiotherapist—were ready to leave the costly city life of Calgary behind.

Opportunity knocks

“We happened to hear about this opening in Creston via a physio magazine,” he said. “We came in August of 2000 and six weeks later we were living here. We were wooed—it was a no-brainer.”

Upon opening, PhysioWorks was primarily a physiotherapy clinic. Recently it has grown not only in the number of staff but also in the variety of treatments available.

“In the last two years, we’ve brought on two therapists that also do acupuncture,” said Foy. “They’re physical therapists that also do acupuncture, as opposed to an acupuncturist who you would see exclusively for acupuncture. This would be a person who assesses you as a physio would, and would then decide whether acupuncture would be one of the modalities that could be used to help.”

PhysioWorks recently hired a massage therapist as well.

“In the last four months, we’ve brought in a massage therapist graduate who actually trained with us for one of her placements,” said Foy. “We were impressed with her hands so we brought her on. It’s nice that we have multiple facets to pull from.”

Having this wide variety of specialists allows the staff of PhysioWorks to treat the backs, necks and shoulders of Creston Valley residents.

However, Foy said that massage and acupuncture can fit into a healthy lifestyle, whether or not a person is injured.

“Even a healthy individual has weaknesses they’re not aware of or tightnesses they live with,” he said. “If you start looking for problems in someone who’s pain free, you’ll find them. It’s amazing how we can still do well in life with known or unknown weaknesses but not actually suffer from pain until a certain threshold is met.”

Foy said his favourite part of the job is passing on his wealth of knowledge to those in need of it.

“I love learning about how the body works and then trying to find words that impart that same information to a person who doesn’t know as much about the body,” he said. “You have to be quite particular with your words—educating and finding new ways to impart info is really rewarding.”

PhysioWorks is located at 124 - 14th Avenue North in Creston. The clinic can be reached at 250-428-8962.