As I look back over my working life, what is so is that I have always been “self employed”. During my youth, I held down a variety of jobs along the way. I worked as a waiter, a demonstrator of toys, a busboy, a greenhouse maintenance person, a bakers assistant, a furniture refinisher, a gardener, a house painter, a door-to-door salesman, and a physical therapy Aide.
When I graduated as a physical therapist, I took my first job at Harborview Medical Center. It was there that I had the experience of learning the profession by spending 3 months on the Burn Unit, 3 months on Outpatient Orthopedics, 3 months on Inpatient Orthopedics and 3 months on the Rehabilitation Medicine floor.
I was disillusioned as a PT. I had not been keen to graduate, but my instructor, Darlene Hertling, told me to “suck it up and graduate and if I wanted to go back to school after I graduated, to do so”.
I really wanted to be an astronaut. Not a PT. but I didn’t have the courage to follow my dreams, and I needed to earn an income because my folks were struggling a bit. When I went to the UW as a freshman, my freshman adviser asked me what I was interested in studying. I told her “computer science” or “sports medicine”. She said “there are no jobs in computer science”….and she advised me to pursue physical therapy, where there were presently 50,000 jobs around the country. In retrospect, I made a massive mistake!
Working My Way through College.
When I arrived here, I had no money of my own, so I looked for work to have spending money and also to pay my way thorough college and contribute to the house. My dad had no work and my mom had no work. When my dad found work, it didn’t pay well. My mom eventually got an interim post at Harborview, where she could pursue her field of expertise, Rehab PT in her dream clinic. She was not well paid during her license period where she had to be paid as a PT Aide. So I had a series of minimum wage jobs to pay for college and so that I had pocket money. In those days, minimum wage was $2.75 and then$3.00 an hour. I worked almost every day and both days on weekends to pay for school.
House painting
My first job, which I got within a few days of arriving here, was house painting with this woman Virginia who had a big old house in the U District that she was remodeling. Her husband worked there…he was a psychiatrist and he smoked like a chimney, which meant that I had to clean that nicotine off the walls and ceiling before we could paint his office and it was so noxious that it almost killed me.
Ginny introduced me to the French Press and Starbucks coffee. At that time, there were only 2 Starbucks stores. One in the U Village and one at the Pike Place Market. Little did we know. To finish the project Ginny hired an old Norwegian carpenter who had the best saying every once in a while he would announce “We are gaining on it” when asked how things were going. I use that saying to this day. Ginny also hired a young couple from Chicago to help get the last of the painting done and while I cannot remember their names, we mostly talked about music and they introduced me to Lynyrd Skynyrd who became one of my favorite bands of the time and who by coincidence, died in a plane crash that year soon after I learned about them…I mean like a month later. It was weird. I liked Ginny and she used to make coffee for us so we could sit down and have a chat. She was curious about South Africa. I was sorry when the project was complete and that I lost track of her.
Furniture Refinishing
The house painting came to an end and I found a more regular job refinishing furniture. Pat and Claude were old fellas in their 70’s who had a factory downstairs and a showroom upstairs in a store in my neighborhood. I worked with Claude mostly, taking furniture apart, stripping the wood, sanding it, staining it and then after Claude sprayed it to get that amazing finish, I put the pieces back together and delivered it. Putting the furniture back together was task I did with Pat, upstairs in the showroom. We always had the Mariners on on the radio, which was my introduction into baseball. Pat was a great resource and he shared his love of the game. In many ways, I can see how radio baseball is a great thing to have on while you work. The color commentators bring the game to life, and its way better than watching baseball. Also, listening to baseball is sort of like listening to cricket, and in that sense it was easy for me to take in the game.
I loved the furniture refinishing job, It was a dirty job working with nasty toxic chemicals that burned if you got them on your skin. Even so, I got pretty good at refinishing. Claude’s son Dave started working with us as was another fellow named Daniel. We were good chums and we got along well enough. Dave drove a white Mustang that was his “chick mobile”. He was a head banger and a pothead and it showed in his work when he would turn up stoned and drunk. But because he was Claude’s son, he got away with murder. Dan was also a stoner. But he was older and more sanguine about everything. He lived with an Icelandic fisherman named Hot Le Gremer – I have never forgotten that. Dan was into the Grateful Dead and was a generation older than Dave and me in terms of his musical taste. Dan was in school, although cannot recall what he was studying.
One time, near the end of my stay there, I remember refinishing a beautiful chest of drawers with elaborate inlays. Claude said “Lets load it up and deliver it” so we put it in the truck and we took off to a very ritzy home in Bellevue. We rang the bell and the door opened and there stood the biggest man I had ever seen close up. It was Paul Silas, the Center for the Seattle Supersonics! . I literally looked at him right at his bellybutton! His house was cool. High ceilings and a half court in his living room! I didn’t know it then, but Paul would go on to become a Manager and have a long career (over 10,000 points and 10,000 rebounds) in the sport.
I worked there for as long as I could stand it, riding my bike to and from work until the next summer, when I just wanted to be outdoors. So I got a job in a Nursery down the street tending to plants and the greenhouse.
Saxe Floral Greenhouse
Norman was the owner and he hired me to make soil, repair the greenhouse glass, deliver plants and prune and water the plants. I was technically the Greenhouse Maintenance Person. In summer it was great. It was fun. I remember one really pretty college girl, Natalie, who used to spend her day watering plants in the greenhouses, and there I was on top of the greenhouse replacing broken panes. I recall long fall afternoons on top of the greenhouse working out physics equations on the glass when school started in the fall.
I made a friend, Will, I cannot recall his last name. He and I used to do the grunt work making soil, emptying beds, etc. We used to get stoned together and eat this amazing sandwich from the Delli around the corner called Hoagies Corner (it’s long gone). I remember introducing the sandwich to Will and he just losing his shit. If you want to make it the way we had it here is the recipe: It’s a roast beef and swiss on sourdough with mayo, lettuce, tomato and pickles. Here is the magic. You actually make the sandwich and wrap it up in paper and then heat it up in the microwave. OMG! It is an amazing sandwich loaded with umami, especially when you are stoned!
During the winter, I was clearing snow off the glass one day and the owners kid threw a snow ball at me. It hit me in the head and I was knocked backwards. I stepped back instinctively, and naturally, stepped right through the glass. I broke several panes and as I was falling I noticed a steam pipe going by so I reached up and grabbed it, swung down and dropped to the ground a little shook up, but unhurt.
I got fired the next day.
Tasty Home Bakery
From the Nursery I went a couple blocks east and applied for a job as a bakers assistant. I got the job. Tasty Home Bakery was another long time business in the neighborhood. The baker himself had been there something like 50 years! He was about 80. I remember that while I was being trained, the Head Baker, a younger guy, maybe 30, said this to me: “the most important thing you need to know about working her is that you can’t hit on the boss’s wife”. I didn’t understand the context, but I said “OK?”. He went on, “she is 20, and she is a fox”. I was like “Oh, really?”
Turns out his wife was a pretty young blonde named Sally, who had one amazing skill. She could crack 4 eggs at a time, two in each hand, and not allow any of the shells into the mix. The Baker loved her, I think, for that reason especially. She was the only one in the bakery who could do that.
The bakery was big, and there was a big table in the middle with the various machines around the outside. We would all stand at the table and work, but it was silent work. Nobody talked. The owners son was Billy Schumacher, the hydroplane racer, and he would come in and work on some days too. He was a surly SOB who would never smile or even talk.
I used to walk into the walk in freezer to get milk or eggs or whatever, and sometimes Sally would walk in behind me, close the door and invite me to come on to her…she was a massive tease and I resisted mightily…she was a cutie, but I needed the money…so I resisted her charms….not that I wasn’t tempted…but still.
I used to make 1,000 croissants before breakfast, and bring them to the store in the Columbia Center. The croissant machine was amazing. It literally folded butter into the dough automatically, rolled out and sliced the triangles, then rolled them up. What I had to do, other than put in the ingredients as needed, was as the conveyor belt delivered four croissants at a time was pick up two at a time, twist them into the right shape, and place them on a tray to bake. The tray were placed on a 6 foot cart with wheels that took something 20 trays, and I would fill 7 carts then bring each of them into the walk in oven, set the timer and monitor the baking. When they were done, I would have to get the carts out of the oven, and if I was going to get burned this was the moment…those carts were HOT.
I’d let them cool a bit, then put the product in boxes carefully, load up the van and head downtown to arrive by 6:30 am
That was the worst part of working at a bakery. I got up at 4:00 am. When school started, I quit.
Black Angus
To make my life easier, I took a restaurant job. I bused tables in a busy steak restaurant up on 145th and Aurora. It was a crazy place. There was a big staff and the restaurant was hopping every night. Family meal allowed us to have a burger for dinner. I always had a mushroom swiss burger.
I tried to be a really great bus boy and was cheerful and efficient. I remember one time this really beautiful woman was eating and she kept making eyes at me and talking to me whenever I came by. As she left, she slipped her motel room key into my hands – the restaurant was attached to a motel – I winked at her and said “I don’t get off till close to midnight” – she said “I’ll be waiting”…
Well I went to her room after work and let myself in…she was out cold. I could not wake her. She was literally drooling she was sleeping so soundly. I sighed, put the key on the table and let myself out…
Another time, a couple was engaging, and the man handed me his business card. He said “I like your energy, and I could use a fellow like you” – I looked at his card and saw that it was a gas station. I asked “to do what”? He said “sales”…I thanked him, and said I would call. I never did. Eventually I quit and went to the Red Robin on Eastlake for work since it was so much closer to both school and home.
Red Robin
I worked at the original Red Robin by the University Bridge. It was a fun but intense job. Unlike the Black Angus crowd, which was older and more blue collar, this was a white collar yuppie crowd. Just like Starbucks, there were only a few Red Robin’s and this was the Flagship Store. So the owners hung around, the wait staff was sexy and crowd was hip. The big draw, besides the fun burgers, was the party drinks. Red Robin was really a bar that served burgers in those days. The hottest section to work was the deck on a sunny summer day, especially Sunday. People would sit out there, eating nachos and drinking heavily. It was loud and the tips were great.
The whole wait staff, me and about 6 other people, mostly hot college girls and one other busser who was also a dude, would go down to the lake under the University Bridge, get high and skinny dip after work. I was in love with so many of the girls I worked with. They were all so much fun and they loved my accent! They were sweet on me.
When I started in PT school, I had to quit my outside jobs and had to take out student loans to pay for school. The schedule was demanding.
PT School
PT school was intense. It was a Bachelor Degree then, now its a Masters and even a Doctorate. We were in class with the Occupational Therapists, and the Prosthetics and Orthotics students for the first year. But even so, it was super interesting, and what I realized is that while we know a lot about a lot of diseases etc, we mostly had no idea when it came to things like cancer, diabetes etc. I quickly determined that I did’t really want to be a PT and I went to my adviser periodically through the year to complain. She encouraged me to finish the first year. So after one year in school, I told her that I was thinking of dropping out. She convinced me to stay and finish, and then to go back to school with a paying job. It seemed like a good idea, and so I reluctantly finished the program. It turns out that I had a knack for biology, biophysics, anatomy and physiology. And so I aced school. School was a combination of medical science, classroom experience and clinical science with practical experience.
I made a few good friends most of whom I have lost contact with over the years. I remember Tim, Nora, Joel, Dave, Elizabeth, Nancy, and others. The two years was a blur. I raced sailboats for fun, hiked in the mountains, and played soccer on a men’s team, and occasionally played golf . I loved those days. I rode my bike miles every day and I was fit. My first real girlfriend in the USA was Sue Newcomb. She was an Oregon girl who I really enjoyed. We broke up after a year when she started to talk about getting married (that spooked me!) . After her I dated a girl who was named Mary Ellen from Santa Barbara who was a concert pianist with a special interest in early music. She and I got along great and then she went down to Santa Barbara for graduate school and being that I was in teh final year of PT school, I chose not to follow her. She was mad at me and so she went off and joined the peace Corps and spent 2 years in Kenya where she met her future husband
Clinical Internships.
Graduating from PT school involved three steps. First complete the coursework, second complete 3 clinical internships of 6 weeks each, and third, pass the Board exams to earn a license to practice. I had arranged to go to Portland for my internships – my requests for Alaska and Hawaii were not offered to me, but Portland seemed like a good opportunity . I went down to find a place to stay and found a great apartment in the attic of an old house near the Rose Garden at the Zoo. The husband, a retired physician and his wife had raised 5 kids there. Their youngest, twin boys, had lived in that updated attic apartment. I made myself at home in my new bachelor pad. I loved Portland. I was 23, living large and making friends. I had 3 girlfriends in Portland. Simone, whom I met at the movie theater. She was a nanny and we had the best time. Wendy, who was Bobbi’s physician sister (I raced sailboats with Bobbi and Roland), who all enjoyed my cooking….and Vicki, more on her later.
Portland Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children
My first internship was at Shriners. It was kind of a crazy situation. The facility is housed on beautiful gardens in an old building. It was like being thrust back into the past. T
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shriners_Hospital_for_Crippled_Children_(Portland,_Oregon)
The surgeons were very aggressive and often did unreversable surgeries on kids with CP that I strenuously objected to. On the other hand, they did really great work with so many kids that I felt good about it on balance. I mostly worked with most surgical kids and helped them get back on their feet. Towards the end of my time there, I became friendly with a 19-year-old-girl named Kim, who was a high amputee – literally one leg amputated at the hip leaving her with a 3 inch stump, and we would spend the days out in the grounds while I trained her to walk, just talking and talking. She was from a really small town and was fascinated with me being from South Africa. When I left for my next rotation, I remember her clinging to me and she cried and cried. I wish I had kept her contact information. I think about her often and wonder how she got along in life.
University of Oregon Health Sciences Center Rehab Unit
Next I reported to the Oregon Health Sciences building on top of the hill in Portland. It reminded me of Harborview, where I was to head to next, because it also had a rehab floor. And I was situated in the Rehab wing with a great mentor named Susie who was a Country Line Dancer in her off hours. She took me to several line dancing events where we got drunk and had fun. There was a volunteer working in the department with me. Her name was Vicki. I remember on moment when I was cleaning a decubitous ulcer (a bed sore) with a water pic tool. We were all gowned up for sterile technique and I made a sweep that lifted the skin under his hip a long way. I looked at Vicki and she looked at me and our eye contact was like love ignited then in that very moment. We spent every possible waking hour together from that moment forward and as our time together was winding down,we took a weekend to go away to Cannon beach. Vicki was a Med student at Stanford. She, ironically, had a boyfriend at Stanford who’s name was also Neil. She was torn. She loved me and she felt loyalty to him. But when I returned to Seattle, she came back with me and stayed for a week before she went off to school. I remember I was house-sitting for Derrick and Margie with Vicki, and we had an amazing week. I actually asked her to marry me. She said “no” and she went back to her boyfriend at Stanford. I was heart broken.
Harborview Medical Center Burn Unit
I had a clinical rotation on the Burn Unit at Harborview. It was an interesting choice. I chose Harborview as my third choice location. It is a teaching hospital and my mom worked there on the Rehab Floor. She was not on the Burn Unit at all so it was a “safe space” but even so, all the PT’s knew my mom and so they had a frame of reference when it came to dealing with me.
The burn unit was intense. My job, as a PT was to get people moving, and also to clean their wounds. The 8th floor was largely people who were up and around, but the 9th floor was difficult since people were often on the ICU with respect to their burns.
As a PT student, I was gaining confidence and feeling my way to getting my license. I often went out to Eric and June’s cabin in the woods to study for the Boards. I used an holistic approach to preparing for the Boards. I would start reading a text book about a particular thing, say a femur fracture, then I would jump from book to book around that same issue. I would read the pathology text, for example, to learn what diseases could cause a femur fracture, then I would read about that disease etiology, and I would read about the healing of bone and then about the anatomy and physiology, then about weight bearing and about rehab etc
I took my license exam and waited for the result. Toward the end of my clinical rotations, I was walking a head injured patient who would look at my name tag and say “Say, you ever try those Neil Chasan drugs?” so I told him to “go tell that really pretty nurse sitting over there” and he did…he approached Melissa, who was a nursing student working as the Ward Secretary. She naturally asked what he was talking about, and I said “me, he is talking about me” so that got us talking.
A day or two later I asked Melissa out and we agreed to go on a date. More on that later…but suffice it to say that we went out on just one date.
Harborview – 1983-1984
My first job was at Harborview. It was a really pretty cool to get a job right away. All through school had worked for minimum wage and suddenly I was making 10x the money…it made it seem like it was OK to work a while and maybe go back to school later. I earned all of $1,500 a mo back then and it seemed like the world. I remember that I was treating a guy on the Burn Unit when I got my first paycheck, and he was an amazingly good blues musician. I took him to American Music and spent my first paycheck on a blues guitar that I had no idea how to play.
Anyhow, the job I got was interesting in that I took the place of the Chief of PT, Lori,who was replaced by my mom, who was the Acting Chief in Lori’s absence. That meant I got to actually replace my mom on the rehab floor. My very first patient was a young woman named Sheri, who contracted polio from the live virus her kid was immunized with. My very first day, my very first patient, an acute polio patient and I had literally no idea….she said to me (crying and wailing) “I don’t want you, I want your mom”…I got reality.
Well over time Sheri and I became good friends along with her husband Rusty, and they went on to become pharmacists and have a great family. I still hear from her from time to time.
The job I had became replacing therapists in different departments who were on extended leave. So I spent 3 months on Rehab, 3 months on Acute Ortho, 3 months on the Burn Unit and 3 months running the Outpatient Clinic.
The Rehab Floor
I started my career dealing with spinal cord injuries, head injuries, amputations, strokes and other serious inpatient maladies like CP, Parkinson’s, peripheral nerve injuries and so on.
It was trial by fire. A few patients stand out in my memory. One in particular was a logger who had fallen down a mountain and broken his atlas in 4 places. This is significant because it’s the closest bone to the skull and its failure could cause a spinal cord injury that would be devastating or even death.
Well this fellow was put in a Milwakee Collar, a removable rigid neck collar to prevent him from moving his head and neck around while the docs tried to figure out how to stabilize the fractures. It’s pretty tough to do an open reduction internal fixation on the atlas.
I came into the room one day and here is this patient who, in addition to his neck injury, also had suffered a head injury, taking his collar off and rolling his head around “Goddammit, I am so fucking stiff” he said as he rolled his head around, collar in hand. I dived at him and held his head still while I called a nurse to put his collar in and I got Plaster of Paris and wrapped him up in to order to lock his collar around his neck to prevent him from taking it off again while the docs figured out how to proceed.
I remember another fellow, Terry, who was a high level quadriplegic who I used to have fun with. He liked this big fat black nurse who’s name I don’t recall, and she used to tease the hell out of him. It was very sad to watch people have to adjust to their disability but, at the same time, it was inspiring to see them learn to cope.
I remember training a C-4 quad who only had sip and puff control on his wheelchair, to be able to steer his wheelchair into the space we created to represent his elevator. He went back to work as a Boeing Engineer.
I learned a lot in my first few months as a licensed PT. Harborview is a teaching hospital. As such, they had “city rounds” each Wednesday when the medical staff would gather in the big conference room and present cases. I also got to attend surgeries whenever I wanted. I also learned to work as a team member on a care team for discharge planing.
All in all, it was a full 3 months on the Rehab Floor.
Inpatient orthopedics
I went from Inpatient Rehab to Inpatient Orthopedics.
I more or less hated this period. It was effectively range of motion and gait training. The most boring mindless work a PT can do.
I did have one great story from that period though…I went into a room to find a gent with both arms and both legs in traction. He had multiple fractures in all four limbs.
“What happened to you?” I asked surprised
What he said literally made the hair stand up on my neck.
His story is as follows.
He was flying across the state in a small plane. When he got to the mountains, he found he could not gain enough altitude to cross the range. He found himself in a cloud bank and could find a way out of the valley he was in. He circled around losing altitude and was unable to figure out why. He spied a car park and decided to put the plane down near there…
He goes on
“When I came to, I realized that I had crashed and my arms and legs were broken. That’s when I smelled gas. So I reached around to the shut off switch. When I came to, I tried to open the door, but with my arm broken I couldn’t do it easily. It took me a while. Then, when I came to, I managed to force my medical kit out of the door and I rolled out the plane because my legs were also broken, and I could not lift them. When I came to, I was on the ground and I belly crawled over to the medical kit. I managed drag it to a tree and get it open and then to give myself a shot, but I was still kinda groggy. When I came to managed to snake my way down to a path, but I got caught on a small rhododendron between my legs. I chewed my way through it and continued down the path. I was leaning up against a log exhausted and stoned. I thought I heard voices so I managed to get my gun out of the medical kit and I managed to fire a shot. When I came to, that’s when I heard the bear. I watch as the bear came down toward me but my gun would not fire. The bear came closer and that’s when I heard people. I passed out and woke up here.”
I was happy when my rotation on acute ortho ended. Next I went to the Burn unit to replace the PT there.
Burn Unit
After 3 months on orthopedics, I went back up to the Burn Unit. This was really where the action was. My job was a lot more interesting. On the 8th floor, I worked on outpatient wound care. On the 9th floor I worked on inpatient would care. This was so intense. We would put the patient in a big tub, then they would suck on nitrous oxide to get high while we debrided their scar. It was super dirty work, painful and you had to be all gowned up.
Marcus Wakenshaw was the plastic surgeon doc on the unit and his surgeries were quite amazing. I used to go down to the OR to watch. My favorite burns surgery involved the use of Flouracine, a chemical that shone green under black light. The surgeons would use a tool called a “dermatome” which was like an electric wood plane. They would shave the scar down one layer of skin at a time under black light to get to where fresh blood showed up and they would attach the skin graft to that. The flouracene allowed them to see the blood as soon as it permeated the skin layer, which you could not see with the naked eye.
I was the first PT to care for a guy named Frank who was a roofer, and he was roofing a building walking backwards on the roof, pulling a wheel barrow of hot tar. He stepped back through the paper that had been stretched between to sections of the building thinking it was the roof. He fell 3 stories and dumped a wheel barrow of hot tar all over him. He was badly burned on top of breaking lots of bones and he lost his leg at the hip.
I had another patient, a young guy, who fell asleep on the couch of a friend who was cleaning his motor cycle. The friend was trying to clean his carburetor in gasoline, and decided to heat the gasoline up on the stove. Well the gasoline ignited and he ran through the house trying to get the fire outside. Well the whole house burned down and my patient was 100% 2nd and 3rd degree burns.
I remember another patient who was a nuclear waste site inspector, who stepped into a storage building at Hanford, and thinking that it was just a puddle on the floor, took a step deeper into the building. He found himself under radioactive water as he had stepped off the edge. He suffered 100% 2nd degree radiation burns.
The burn unit was an amazing experience and one where I truly got how amazing the health care system is when it works. I also made a personal vow…never get burned.
Outpatient Orthopedics
My next stop was outpatient Ortho. It was here that I started to formulate the idea of opening my own clinic and being my own boss. I had been to a couple of weekend continuing education courses and learned a lot, and I was present to how much there was to learn.
With my classmate Tim, I went to a couple of Start Your Own Practice workshops, and learned the foundations of financial planning and practice management that formulated my thinking for the next phase of my career.
My dad had given me the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and at the seminars I was reminded of that title and also given the following titles to read as I got my mindset around opening an outpatient clinic.
- Release your Breaks
- Contact, the First 4 Minutes
- Dress for Success
- The Richest Man in Babylon.
I treated all comers in the clinic and had access to some then new technology that made the work seem exciting.
I treated a young paraplegic…Sonny who I became good friends with. He and an equipment salesman, Dave and I tried to start a custom seating business…it went nowhere. But the process was great. Dave and Sonny and I used to meet for dinner once a month at Tratoria Michelli in Pioneer Square and it was there that in addition to this custom seating business, we formed the idea of creating an investment club, which we did some years later.
At the same time, I had a clinical supervisor, I think her name was Maureen, who felt very superior to me. She had like 10 years of experience. I asked her for time off to go to a continuing education seminar on Lumbar Spine Manipulation that I wanted to attend. She said “no”. I went to her boss, Lori , now back from her leave of absence, and asked her. She said ” I have to support my senior staff”. I said “Lori, if you say no, I will just quit.” Lori said “Sorry, you can’t have the time off.” I said “I quit. I will give my two week notice today” She said “You can’t quit”. I said “I just did”.
Tim and I had been meeting regularly to plan a private practice, and we decided to work together to open an office and make a go of it.
I remember having a conversation with my mom and dad who said “Where will you get your patients?” and I remember answering “I don’t know”.
Well I started doing home care while Tim and I worked on finding a location. I purchased a mobile treatment table, and a portable ultrasound machine and electrical simulator. I got a $10,000 loan from the bank, and I was on my way. I went to Harborview for my patients since I knew the discharge planing process and how hard it was to get skilled PT home care scheduled.
My first patient was that fellow Frank, who had lost his leg and had 80% 2nd and 3rd degree burns. He lived in West Seattle and I would go over there a couple days a week. I got him walking.
Orthopedic Physical Therapy Associates – OPTP – 1983 – 1984
Tim and I formed a partnership, and rented a place in Laurelhurst to both use as an office, and a home where Tim lived. We turned the living room into a reception area, the dining room into a treatment room, and the basement into a gym. I built a treatment table to use, we purchased an answering machine (new technology), leased a copy machine and printed business cards. We were in business.
The partnership was frustrating for me. I seemed to be doing all the work. After some back and forth and a few months of trying, Tim and I agreed to kill the partnership. Melissa and I who were living in a shoe box in Greenwood, moved into the Laurelhurst house, and “Chasan Physical Therapy” was born.
Chasan Physical Therapy – 1984 – 1994
I continued my home care practice and started to make an effort to see more people in the office. On a gradient I built a practice and after a couple years, Melissa wanted me to move the practice out of the house and she helped me find an office in the new Nordstrom Tower.
One patient who stood out for me was Pat. She was a 60 year old woman who had throat cancer. I treated her for the neck issues she had following surgery and radiation treatment. She had no taste buds and so she lost weight like crazy. She literally didn’t eat. I loved her. She and I talked for hours and I really appreciated her. I was sad to learn she passed away when she did.
Another patient that I became friends with was Mike. He was a venture capitalist who offered me a chance to build an empire, but I was only 23 and had no experience really so I turned him down. A BIG mistake. We have stayed in touch.
Nordstrom Medical Tower
The move to the Nordstrom Medical Tower was interesting. It created a new business dynamic. I had to get a massive loan to build out the business, sign the lease, buy the equipment and so on. It was a big risk. At the same time, I had no real connections on Pill Hill, and there was a MASSIVE PT clinic in the building on the top floor aligned with the orthopedic practice it was attached to. I believed that I could make a go of it, so I pressed on.
While I was trying to get my practice going, I was nominated to be the Treasurer of the Washington Chapter of the American Physical therapy Association. This meant that I served on the Executive Committee and I was responsible for the budget and management of their money. I made the decision to pursue purchasing an office building and now, as a result of that decision, the PT Association is on a long term outstanding financial footing. In fact they recently had a “morgtage buyrning “ceremony and invited me as the Guest of Honor. The Washington Chapter of the American Physical Therapy Association is the most financially stable chapter in the country.
I continued to pursue my training in Orthopedic Manual Therapy by learning from the Masters. My early teachers were Mitch Blakney from Tacoma, and Brad Jordan from Everett, from whom I learned about neck PT, and Mariano Rocabado from Chile from whom I learned about head, neck and TMJ PT. Janet Travell, from who I learned about Trigger Points and Myofascial Release, Earl Pettman from Canada from whom I learned about manual therapy and manipulation, and Robin McKenzie from New Zealand from whom I leaned about his theories on discogenic low back pain. I also learned about objective testing from a fellow named Keith Blankenship. I went to so many continuing education courses, and on a gradient, I gradually became a good PT. Mitch had said that “it takes 10 years to become good at manual therapy”. I scoffed at him, but in truth, he was exactly right.
At a PT Association Board of Directors Meeting, I was impressed by the Newsletter Editor – Beth Durgan, who was a PT about my age from Tacoma. I invited her to come to Seattle for a meeting with me.
We met at The Hunt Club in the Sorento Hotel, and I asked her about her satisfaction with her career. She was a divorced single mom living with her mom and working as a lead clinician in a local private practice.
I asked her if she would be interested in opening her own practice in partnership with me. She said she would and we started to search for a location.
I had read Think and Grow Rich, and created a plan to build a multi-location practice and sell it to investors from Hong Kong when Hong Kong reverted to China in 10 years. My goal was to sell it for $1,000,000. Beth’s office was the second step, the first step being my Nortstrom Tower office.
600 Broadway
I had an opportunity to expand the Nordstrom Tower office and did that to increase my clinical staff and we added PT’s. My staff count was at 9 when we got an opportunity to move into the 600 Broadway Building and create a well designed and much bigger office. At that time I had clinical staff in the office and was running a home care and nursing home consulting practice. I was making lumbar rolls to sell, and was trying to make money as a business owner. We offered all sorts of services including biofeedback, industrial testing, and sports fitness physicals in addition to rehab.
Beth got certified and earned her Masters Degree in Manual Therapy by the Ola Grimsby Institute, and she encouraged me to do the same. I hosted a Grimsby class series in my office mostly led by Brad Jordan who became a very good friend, and I pursued my advanced training too. Jim and Brian, who worked for me in Beth’s clinic were also certified by Ola, and they eventually went on to open their own offices. About this time I was regularly teaching on the topic of the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Scar Tissue Formation and Wound Healing at the UW and I was asked to write a chapter for the medical text book Management of Common Musculoskeletal Disorders by Kessler and Hertling. I remember telling Melissa and she said, “that’s nice, but you don’t now how to write”! This was unkind, but also true, I really had no idea where to start. The chapter Darlene asked me to write was about dense connective tissue and would healing, so after a few false starts, I contacted Larry Tillman, PH.D. who was my resource and asked if he would collaborate. He agreed. We went on to write chapters in two editions. It is my highest accomplishment as a PT. I also, later, wrote a journal article for Orthopedic Physical Therapy Clinics of North America titled “Functional Training for the Low Back Patient” in 1999 – another highlight.
One of my classmates in the Gribmsby class was Mike Kane, who introduced me to Gary Grey. Gary taught an approach to PT that I called my “unifying theory” – an approach that blended all of my assessment skills with a functional approach to rehab that gave me the language of my point of view as a PT
I took that information and my interest in golf, developped the Swing Reaction System a functional exericse video specific for golfers. GOLF Magazine gave it 4 stars! Later I wrote “Total Conditioning for Golfers” in 2000, but I jump ahead.
Caremark/HealthSouth
In 1994 there were some changes taking place in health care and it became evident that big companies were sniffing around looking to consolidate the field of PT in Seattle. I had created a collaborative group of top PT clinic owners in town and together we formed an LLC called The Rehab Alliance. We all leveraged our connections with insurance companies to negotiate rates for our on-board clinics. I was personal friends with Terry Rogers, who was the Medical Director of Premera also with Dick Latent who was the Medical Director of Providence as well as Clayton Brandes who was the CEO of First Choice. This made me the most visible face of the The Rehab Alliance, and was probably why I was contacted by the Acquisitions Manager of Caremark who shared their intention to acquire my clinics. I negotiated with them to sell my two clinics. I talked to Beth and she agreed to sell as well and together, we sold for $1,200,000 fulfilling my original goal.
What I am present to now is that I set a goal of selling my business for $1,000,000 and I took a set of actions to make that happen. Imagine if I had set a goal to sell my business for $100,000,000. I am pretty sure that I would I have taken a whole different set of actions to fulfill on that goal.
I took a job with the new company as a paid clinic manager and I quickly realized that I am a terrible employee. I need to be my own boss. Caremark sold to Health South and at the annual meeting in Alabama, I realized that Richard Schrushy was a criminal and I vowed to leave the company. (He eventually went to prison for fraud and embezzlement).
The Swing Reaction System
While at HealthSouth, I spent weekends working on the script for a golf video. At that time, golf improvement videos were a big deal. I was an avid golfer, reading books and watching videos on golf in an effort to improve my golf swing. I took Gary Gray’s teachings and created several exercises designed to enhance the golf swing, and I perfected them with the idea to create a golf fitness video that starred Gary Player, the famous South African golfer who every golfer (of the day) knew as a fitness guru.
I had a more or less finished script, and I had free airline ticket that was about to expire, that I earned by getting bumped off a flight almost a year earlier. I checked to see where the Senior Tour was playing and I made sure that Gary Player was participating, and because I was a Health South employee at the time and Health South managed the Tour Fitness Trailer, I figured I would jump on a plain to Houston and meet Gary Player.
I arrived in Houston, rented a car and took myself off to the tournament site. I put on a Health South shirt and walked in saying “I am with the fitness trailer” – They let me in. I went to the club house and asked where the locker room was. A woman said that it’s off limits. I had my script in an envelope with Gary Player’s name on it and I said that I had a letter to deliver to Gary. She said he was not there yet and she would put it in his locker. I inserted a note and asked him to give me a call if he was interested. I left my cell number.
I hung out in the fitness trailer and met the progolfers as they came into the tent and I watched the guys work with these top athletes. Obviously, this was not a fitness situation in that the players were setting up to compete in a tournament, but I was very aware that my exercises were cutting edge and I had an opportunity to make an impact. I was pleased. I had to leave Houston and I had made plans to head home through LA to visit my Sister Sue. While I was in LA. When I arrived in LA, I received a call from an odd number. It was Gary Player. He said “I am very interested in your video, I like the idea a lot. It’s very needed and the exercises are good. I am going to pass your information onto my agent, Alistair Cook, of MGI and he will work out the details” . I was over the moon. My long shot landed. I always believed that without being attached to the outcome, you take a long shot every once in a while. This experience is an example of why that makes sense.
I flew back to Seattle and waited to hear from Alistair. When he called, it was a very short call and I came back to earth with a crash. He said “Gary is very excited to star in your video. He wants Sony to distribute it. (Sony was the major distributor of golf videos). He will be in the USA on and off for the next several months and we could find time to film it in his schedule”. He said “write down this address. (he gave me the address of MGI in LA). Send a check of $100,000 there and we are in business.”
I gulped. I didn’t have the budget for this. I had budgeted $20,000 to make the video. I just could not afford to do hire Gary Player. I called Sony to see if they would put up the money. I talked to the buy who was in charge of golf videos and he gave it a lot of thought. In the end he said that they would not support the video without a Marquee Star , and they would not put up the money to get the star involved because they saw their sales declining. He suggested I make it and self market it and that way I would see more than if I hired Gary Player and Sony because then, on a $30.00 video, I would see maybe $0.50 per sale so it would be impossible to recapture my investment, whereas with a self published title I would earn most of money after expenses were extracted. He said I should be able to sell about 3,000 videos through PR, and that that would be the best place to spend money.
I gave it some thought and decided to do just that. I hired a company in Seattle called Merwin Productions who had made some killer videos mostly for Microsoft. I met with Corky Merwin and her husband David, and we worked out the story board for the video. We hired a director, Barry Rinehart, who had directed several National Geographic specials and we hired actors. We arranged to rent time on a golf course for the on-course sections and we rented a sound stage for the shoot. I had been talking to a former LPGA pro Linda Fuller, whoagreed to participate in the video, so we filmed he full swing in slow motion. My buddy Gus Zefkeles who was a disciple of my exercises – he was the club champ at Bear Creek – and was a big fan also agreed to appear. I arranged to film the outdoor part at McCormick Woods, my favorite course. We had great weather and in the end we filmed a great product while playing 9 holes. The next part was the editing and I was deeply involved in that process too. It was fascinating watching the edits alter the final version (this was all before inexpensive desk top publishing or editing was available). I was happy with the final product although since it was my first effort, I could immediately see a thousand ways to make it better as soon as we dropped it. Nevertheless, I set about building a PR effort once we launched the video.
The first thing I did was send it to all the golf magazines and I successfully made it into the review page of GOLF Magazine where they gave it 4 stars! I had set up fulfillment with a local fulfillment company and we started to get sales. I made it into Senior Golfer, Women’s Golf and other golf magazines. I was a PR machine…(I hired PR company to help me get started), and I soon realized that once the initial gloss wore off, in order to keep selling I needed to keep it going as an ongoing marketing effort. So I started developing a Continuing Education Workshop and I began marketing to physical therapists who worked with golfers and in golf communities as a way for them to monetize their location. I got hired by ACE and the ACSM to do workshops and I was flying around the country dong what I could to promote the video.
I got a call from David Merwin to let me know that I won a Telly Award https://www.tellyawards.com/ for the video. I went down to pick up the award and was surprised…it’s kinda cool.
Pretty quickly after I started teaching my program, I realized I needed a book that allowed me to deliver the material in writing in much more detail.
I quit Health South, and set myself up at home to write. I was disciplined, and during the next several months sitting at home working on the contents of a golf fitness book based on the video, I put the book together.
“Total Conditioning for Golfers” and “Fitness for Golf “were the working titles.
Sports Reaction Center
About this time, Melissa was a little stir crazy having me home all the time, and so she encouraged me to “go back to work”… while I had been working my book, I had maintained contact with Mark Pierce, the ATC whom I had worked with while at Health South. So we started seriously discussing the idea of creating a sports clinic together. The Idea I had was to find a clinic that allowed us to have a cash paying service rather than a service that billed patients. Mark was a good ATC and I had sports bent as a PT with a primary interest in golf and golf performance. I had been working on my game, hitting balls in the yard into a net, playing weekly in a four ball and taking Sam to the driving range each evening up at Jackson Park. I was getting better, and so I thought I could make an impact in the field.
Mark and I started to look for a place to locate. We intended the clinic to to be primarily a golf fitness place, and when I found Studio Fore, and indoor golf faculty with a 2,000 sg space about it in a Bellevue warehouse, I thought that we had found our location. Leslie Holbert was a retired LPGA professional who was now teaching in an indoor studio with video lessons, and along with her was Tim O’Brien, a local club maker who was a magician with his tools. In addition they had a 10,000 sf indoor range with a sand trap and a lounge area. It seemed like we could make it work. The rent was cheap ($2,000 a month compared to the $12,000 a month I was paying at 600 Broadway). Mark and I felt like we could make it work.
What happened next was sort of funny. When I sold my clinic to Caremark they purchased and consolidated several clinics. They put all the duplicate and surplus equipment in a warehouse in Renton. I knew this and went down there to look at it. I selected several items and went to the head office where my former office manager, Joyce, was now the Regional Administrative Assistant , and I made an agreement to take several items off their hands. I paid them and I got a receipt.
We went back and loaded the several items – tables, chairs, treatment tables, machines etc onto a truck we rented and we drove away. When I got home, there was a police officer on the phone for me.
Police detective: Mr. Chasan
Me: Thats me.
Police detective: Well sir I have a warrant for your arrest.
Me: Oh yes? ON what charge?
Police detective: Theft
Me: What did I allegedly steal?
Police detective: A truckload of physical therapy equipment from a warehouse in Renton
Me: Well you better come and arrest me then!
Police detective: (silence)
Me: Hello?
Police detective: Yes Sir, I am here…
Me: I am at 8416 SE 53rd Street on Mercer Island
Police detective: Yes I have your address
Me: I will be waiting
Police detective: Is there anything you want to tell me about this allegation?
Me: Oh you mean like that the equipment was paid for and that I have a receipt?
Police detective: (incredulous) Oh you have a receipt?
Me: I do.
Police detective: (A little chagrined) I will have to get back to you
Me: You do that.
We moved in, signed the lease, got signage, and opened the doors. I started trying to get the local golf pro’s to send me patients and while I had little success, I did get to play golf on all the private courses as the golf pro’s guest.
I realized pretty quickly that I needed paying patients. So we started seeing patients. At about the same time I met Doug McDonald and we created a concept business called Seattle Golf Academy. We got a few players to work with and we helped a young woman Kerry make it onto the UW golf team and we found a way to work together.
Sports Reaction Center was a fun clinic. We were making headway, seeing patients, having fun, and then one day Mark went on vacation and I went through his files to find that he was not doing what he claimed to be doing regarding our business and I terminated the partnership.
At about the same time Beth, who was now married to David Sobba and who lived in Whitefish, invited me to open an office in David’s building. David with an orthopedic surgeon and it seemed like a good idea. So I arranged to do that. Of course, there was push back with the big city jew opening a clinic in small town America. So in the end, after a lot if angst and frustration and a feeling of being duped and lied to, I sold it to the hospital for no gain. even so, I enjoyed the experience of seeing it come to life and actually working when it started, and I enjoyed visiting with Beth and David periodically when I went to Montanna.
Studio Fore was run by Lesilie Holbert and Torchy Hansen and was downstairs from my clinic. Eventually they were going to close and I worked it out with the club maker Tim O’Brien to stay while Doug and I tried to get Seattle Gold Academy off the ground. I purchased a Body Balance for Performance franchise, and got Mike trained in delivery, and then I went on and with Dave Ostrow, out of Philly, purchase the entire Body Balance franchise outfit. We had 100 locations around the country. It became clear really fast that the franchisee’s were wholly unequipped for success. I set about giving them tools to create successful operations. I went to Philly over and over to meet with Dave and the team. I got wrapped up with the company who we purchased the franchise from, a scientology based consulting outfit out of LA
All of this came crashing to a halt when first, the Seattle Golf Academy failed as a business concept. Coinciding with that, I relocated Sports Reaction Center to a new location in Bellevue. We got pretty busy as sports PT’s.
Soon after that, The Titleist Performance Institute created their approach to golf fitness. That killed Body Balance and so both of those businesses went bankrupt. I sold my franchise to Gregg Rogers, a local golf pro, at a loss, and my then trainer Chris went to work with Gregg.
Things were changing PT and I retooled to put technology to work. I installed an Alter G, got the Optojump technology and the D2 technology and we made a commitment to expand our sports patients by getting on the field.
I treated Kevin Swyrin who was a winger for USA Rugby and he introduced me to the Seattle Rugby Club. I stared covering local rugby and it was great fun. I started traveling with Seattle Rugby Club and Old Puget Sound Rugby Club and was one of the first to attend the First Annual Rugby Medicine Conference. This led eventually to my interest in concussion management and further my being called up to serve on the Sports Medicine Team for USA Rugby in their international series between Canada, Uruguay, and the USA. Truly a highlight of my sports medicine career.
I was treating Mike Sayenko when he qualified for the USA Track and Field Marathon Team headed to Deagu in South Korea for the World Championships. Mike asked me to go along with him as his therapist. Another highlight of my Sports Medicine Career.
I was selling optojump technology and got invited to present to the US Olympic Organization’s High Performance Coaching Staff, another highlight of my career.
All those highlights came at the end of my career. Health care reform occurred and although I supported the ACA, the impact was that it quite literaly killed my business. I eventually closed the doors when the sale I arranged and had been counting on, fell through at the last minute.
Toward the end of my career, I was treating a guy named Ron who was a real estate agent. We got along pretty well, and would get together to go for walks to talk. He liked my dog and enjoyed chatting with me. Whenever I talked to Ron, I would say, “Hey Ron, how are ya?”, he would say, “Great, I just made $85,000”. He literally did this everyime I called. I asked him how on earth I could have that experience. He said, “Get your real estate license.” So, in anticipation of the end of my treating career I studied in the evenings for my real estate licence. and got my real estate license and started my career in real estate at Asset Realty in Kirkland.
Asset Realty
Michelle and Chad are amazing. They have built a machine to make it easy to prospect. I learned the basics of real estate here. My first foray into residential resale involved me following up on prospects to get listings. They had built a farming system that generated leads. Working part time on weekends only the first year, I made about $90,000. Then I flew down to LA to go to a Mike Ferry workshop and while there I had dinner with Ron, who lived in LA. He told me that he was in the land business and he hated working the phones. I said, “I can don’t mind the phones.” So, he asked me to be his lead generater. He had built a steady business and had about 3,000 specific properties he targeted and I would call them each day. I would gernete the lead, Ron would bring it to a buyer and if the picked it up, I earned $10K I was doing about a deal a month for the 3 years I worked for Ron and when the back side of the deal, the new construciton was ready to sell, he fired me. WHich is to say tht he denied me the bankroll I had earned that he was obligated ot pay me out of the new construction sales. Needless to say, I was pissed.
After Ron, I spent the next couple of years starting my own land business. Its not an easy business and it takes a long time to get paid from the time you do a deal, but, I set about it. and had we not got interuppted by Covid, I would be further along.
In any event that is what I am doing now.
My Life: A Memoir 