Pursuing a Career in Physical Therapy - Tamra Wroblesky, PT, DPT

Tamra Wroblesky, 29, was recently named Emerging Leader of the Year by the APTA. She is no stranger to the Section on Women’s Health, as she was Student Special Interest Group President in her last year of school, represented the Section at several conferences, marched on Capitol Hill, and is currently on the Name Change Task Force. In her two years since graduating PT school from Thomas Jefferson University, she opened up Inner Dynamics Physical Therapy with Alison Ankiewicz, her last clinical instructor, and a celebrated pelvic physical therapist in central NJ with over 20 years of experience. In less than two years, Tamra and Alison have grown their reputation and their practice, by hiring three more pelvic therapists to their team and providing quality care to Central and Jersey Shore residents.

What made me pursue a career in physical therapy…

When I was a college freshman and only 18 years old, I experienced severe pelvic pain that seemed to come out of nowhere. I went to gynecologists, the emergency room, countless specialists but no one could tell me what was wrong with me. My pain became chronic, and all of college I had difficulty sitting through my classes and being a functional human being. During those tumultuous four years, I turned to writing as an outlet and started my blog based off my favorite Rumi poem:

“Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they are given wings.”

-Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

My blog was one of the first that talked about taboo issues such as vaginal, pelvic pain or pain with sex. It grew in readership, and had close to 60,000 views. One night a woman sent me an email begging me to go see a women’s health physical therapist out in San Francisco instead of having a vulvectomy. I cancelled my surgery, booked my plane ticket, and flew out with my mother to see Elizabeth Rummer and Stephanie Prendergast. They were the first ones to give me a comprehensive evaluation and showed me the possible connection with hips, especially with my history as a college tennis player. I returned home with more answers, received two labral surgeries for each hip, and began several bouts of pelvic physical therapy, as well as countless injections by specialists. I went to both good and bad pelvic PTs and desperately wanted to have better access to someone close by.

I realized I needed to go back to school and become a pelvic physical therapist. I needed to become a stronger voice in the pelvic community for all these women and men who have been misdiagnosed and misheard. To this day, I am still mystified how many people show up in my clinic after years of searching, and have relatively easy “fixes.” The knowledge out there about pelvic health in the United States is still horrifically outdated. It might be better around major cities, but in the suburbs and rural areas I have traveled, it is very poor. I recently put on a Pelvic Health for Performance workshop at a weightlifting gym in Pennsylvania and so many women were incontinent. Some of them had symptoms for over 10 years and we just changed their breathwork and awareness of certain muscles and they were no longer leaking! Things like that push me to learn more about our field and become a better practitioner because we are indispensable.

Stay tuned for “Part II: My SPT Experience”