Provo, UT; NOW I CAN! Intensive Pediatric Physical Therapy - Randy

ternship experience was amazing.  I would highly recommend it and advise to make sure you get more than 2 or 3 weeks in a given location.  
Now I Can! is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to helping disabled children reach their greatest potential (Nowican.org).  The therapists strive to achieve this mission through intensive physical therapy with patients that come in 5 days a week for 4-hour sessions.  Generally this will last 3-4 weeks.  I have had the privilege of volunteering for Now I Can for the 7 months, and this past semester I decided to apply for internship credit.
Because of my personal experience with physical therapy I was myopic enough to believe that the only field I would be interested in was sports injury recovery.  I searched for a place where I could volunteer, but no outpatients clinics designated for sports injuries were close to where I lived.  With a bicycle as my only form of transportation anywhere, this made things difficult.  I later found out about a pediatric physical therapy clinic just around the corner from my apartment, so I decided to investigate.  They let me know there was an opening for one more volunteer, and I started going every Thursday as a therapist assistant.
As I helped the children with different exercises and stretches that expanded their abilities I began to see how driven many of them were.  I fell in love with the whole experience.  The disabilities that the children with whom I was able to work included Cerebral Palsy (differing levels of severity), brain anomaly, Spina Bifida, brain tumor resection, and hemiplegia.  Never before had I worked with or even been around children with neurological disabilities, so any ideas or notions I previously had were created by myself.  However, working alongside these children and getting to know them by talking with them and observing them has led me to the conclusion that they are children of divine heritage just as is everyone around them.