This review will have two parts since it is so long: I'm going to first discuss what I have experienced with Dr. Frankie then detail my story for if anyone reading is interested.
Dr. Frankie has been a breath of fresh air. She has given me hope when I thought it was lost and has provided a very high level of service for me that I previously didn't think was possible from a physical therapist.
I have a bad ankle that causes me pain, has limited flexibility, and is very tight all around. Dr. Frankie has attacked my ankle tightness and limitations piece by piece, and my ankle is able to do far more now than it was just a year ago. She is excellent at listening to details I have provided and utilizing them in the exercises that she does with me in person and that she assigns me to do at home. She also listens to me when I let her know that an exercise causes pain and will adjust to a different exercise that will cause the same movement or stretch but that won't hurt. The level of detail her work has provided has been excellent and I couldn't have asked for better service.
On top of her listening skills, she has had practical exercises to build flexibility and strength in my ankle from our first meeting together. Her knowledge and understanding of the ankle has been obvious as she legitimately seems to understand it better than the OCR ankle specialist I saw before I came to UpSlope. When I told her the exercises I was previously prescribed from both my prior PT and the OCR specialist were causing me pain and that I couldn't do them consistently because of it, she told me it makes sense, explained why those would cause pain, and showed me different exercises that cause the same activity but do not cause pain (I did tell the specialist and my former PT about the pain, but they both told me it shouldn't cause pain and left it at that). We have now done dozens of different exercises to attack my ankle problems, and many of them have helped. I think the number of exercises she has prescribed shows the breadth of knowledge she has just related to the ankle alone and is very impressive.
Stairs are now much easier for me than when I started, and I have been able to do jumping exercises that I certainly could not have done just in February or March. The overall flexibility of the ankle has improved dramatically and I strongly believe that it will continue.
The last item I would like to share about Dr. Frankie is that she has a fantastic attitude. She seems happy to be at work every time I see her, and on days when I showed a large amount of progress week over week, she has gotten very excited and has shown bursts of energy from seeing it. She truly cares that her patients improve and get better and seeing their improvement raises her already high spirits.
I would also like to state that I am aware that my feet do NOT smell good at all, and she works on my ankle about once a week. She has never complained about how bad it smells even once though I have to believe its stench has crossed her mind many times. I think that is just another example of how good her attitude on the job is and wanted to make sure I share that as well.
Now to my story:
I've had my with my left ankle for around the last decade since I was somewhere in the range of 12-13 years old. There was no specific injury that caused it and it has only gotten worse every year to the point where I haven't played any sports or run on it in the last three or four years. In high school, I had a bad PT experience that was not helpful at all and possibly made things worse, so for while I wrote off PT as an option to help it.
When I moved to Fort Collins a year ago, I decided to go to OCR to see if I could get help there. I got an x-ray, MRI, and EKG test that found nothing to help and all they could tell me was that it was tight. They referenced me to a neurologist because they were so stumped they thought it might be a neurological problem. 3 more MRIs later and I found out it was not neurological and I was basically back where I started before I went to OCR.
I finally decided I had no other choice and looked for a physical therapy place here. UpSlope had the best reviews so I gave it a shot. I certainly do not regret it. I've been going since January 2024 and have seen marked improvement over my time here. Though my progress has been slow, I think the uniqueness of my problem and the length of time it has persisted have made it so that there is no quick fix for it. This is the first year of the last decade of my life where my ankle in terms of ability and pain levels has improved rather than deteriorated. I'm not done yet as I still have some obstacles to go before I can exercise again without pain, but it finally seems that exercise is a future possibility. read more