This past weekend, Cosmos and I made the trip to Columbus, Ohio to watch the Top 25 women’s basketball matchup between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Iowa Hawkeyes. If you follow any sports at all, I’m sure you’ve heard of Caitlin Clark, the nation’s leading scorer, and what she and the rest of the Iowa team have created. 

It’s something special and I’m grateful we were able to see them play in person, especially against an incredibly talented Ohio State team that ended up beating Iowa in overtime. 

Driving through Ohio this weekend made me reflect on the other time I have spent in the state. When I was in college, I needed to complete a semester-long internship in an area of exercise science in order to graduate. At that time, I was very interested in learning more about cardiac rehabilitation and wanted to help people who were managing different types of cardiovascular diseases like my father had. 

I got accepted to complete my internship at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the most respected cardiology centers in the world, and spent four months there. 

My internship consisted of me working in Phase 1, 2, and 3 Cardiac Rehabilitation, as well as exercise testing. Phase 1 Cardiac Rehabilitation is completed right after someone goes through open heart surgery or any other form of cardiovascular surgery. 

An exercise physiologist working in this field is the person who helps someone take their first steps again in the hospital, makes sure their body is responding appropriately to exercise, and helps educate the patients on how to better take care of themselves moving forward. 

Phase 2 and Phase 3 Cardiac Rehabilitation are both in the outpatient setting, with Phase 2 consisting of exercise that is highly monitored and Phase 3 being much less monitored. Most of the people we worked with in Cardiac Rehabilitation were very sick, and were not able to be as active as they’d once had and wished they still could. They were surviving while managing disease, instead of thriving without it. 

One of the biggest takeaways for me was realizing that the people participating in Cardiac Rehabilitation needed the best care and education that they could possibly receive, and thankfully they were in the best place to get it. 

Unfortunately, as an exercise professional in that field, I couldn’t truly help people in the way I wanted to. I realized that what I truly wanted was to help people prevent themselves from ever ending up in one of the most prestigious cardiology centers in the world in the first place. 

I wanted to help on the preventative side of health, rather than the reactive side. 

Taking action toward improving our health every day is the key to minimizing our chances of living with disease. These actions to improve our health can fall under any category, including physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and many others. 

We don’t need to do everything at once, but rather take frequent small steps that build upon one another. While I’m grateful for my time at the Cleveland Clinic, I’m most grateful I learned how to hopefully never have to go there again.