Navy Sailor Gets His Sea Legs

Patrick Boettger is on active duty with the United States Navy in the country of Behrain. While on a run in the middle of the desert, Patrick jumped off a two foot cliff and injured his ankle. With limited medical personnel on his base, Patrick had to endure pain for over three months before returning home to Illinois for a two week leave. Patrick found this to be his window of opportunity to get his ankle better, and overcome his injury. He began treatment at ATI Physical Therapy in Matteson, Illinois in order to return to duty.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Patrick. I'm currently active duty Navy, and I'm stationed overseas in Bahrain. Bahrain is a middle eastern country, mostly desert. From the Seals team, I run all of their range operations, I issue them all of their weapons. I went on a four to five mile hike, through rough terrain in the middle of the desert, when I was over there training, and I jumped off a two foot cliff, and I rolled it outwards. So after I injured my ankle, it was about three months, I found out I was coming home on leave for two weeks, and right then and there, I was like, I'm going to go somewhere and get this thing fixed, get a 100 percent. I was told to come to ATI.

To me, that's significant, because when you think of military personnel being on leave, they need to spend time with their family, with their loved ones, with their friends, but he's had a unique situation. He had an ankle injury that has kind of put him back, and it's a risk for him to be injured with his type of work. The fact that he is here with us, and spending that time with us here at ATI in Matteson, to get back to what he was doing, is very significant, to not only him but to us and to be able to serve and work with Patrick.Every single exercise they've shown me here, has helped out dramatically. I haven't been able to run farther than seven paces, and today I ran seven minutes on the treadmill, and that's only in a two week period. To me, that's dramatic improvement. I was definitely amazed by my results I achieved in two weeks, I thought it was going to take me two to three months.We're just very lucky here to have met a hero from our own neighborhood, and been able to help him in a way that only we can.