The “Clinical Healing” Experience of a High School Track and Field Athlete

Author’s Note: While Brendan is a fictional character created for the purpose of this essay, his experiences are based on a true story.

Brendan joined track and field and cross-country in high school, with aspirations of becoming an athlete. He loved running, and Brendan hoped that someday he would be good enough to try out for the Olympics.

From his achievements, this certainly seemed possible. Brendan would often place in the top ten in competitions, and at one point, had even been made a captain of the track team.

The coaches were often quick to praise him as the most valuable member of the team. Sadly, his dreams of becoming a professional athlete was cut short when he injured his left foot during practice.

From that day forward, his leg was constantly in pain, has been to several doctors, physical therapists, and given treatments that offer only temporary relief.

In this paper, I would like to examine Brendan’s experiences of “clinical healing,” how they are related to Mattingly’s work and the concept of a “three-fold present,” and why Brendan’s “clinical healing” could be seen as a success or failure.

How It Started

When Brendan injured his foot, it came about one day while he was practicing his running. Initially, Brendan didn’t consider his injury to be serious, as he had fallen while running before, and assumed that it would go away after getting some rest.

As the days went on, however, his foot continued to feel pain and showed no signs of getting better. Still thinking that it wasn’t a serious injury, though, Brendan thought to apply ice to where he felt pain, which worked, and allowed him to continue running.

Eventually, Brendan realized that applying ice wouldn’t be enough to heal his leg, and decided to seek medical attention.

Seeking Medical Help

Brendan’s first step in seeking medical help was with his regular doctor, who recommended that he see a podiatrist. In total, two podiatrists, each with their own suggestions for treatment, attended Brendan.

The first podiatrist he saw determined after an MRI scan that Brendan could still exercise, just not at the scale when he was in track and field, or cross-country. He also had Brendan wear a cast for six weeks to see if his foot would feel any better from not using it.

After having his cast removed, the second podiatrist that Brendan visited recommended that he wear shoes that are more comfortable, and to take an inflammatory medication called Ibuprofen. Both podiatrists were unable to determine what exactly was wrong with his foot, other than determining that the root of the problem lied with one of his tendons.

Another attempt that was made to help Brendan’s leg feel better was to send him to physical therapy. Through physical therapy, the first podiatrist had hoped that the routines that Brendan performed would help his leg heal by loosening the muscles in his foot, and make it more flexible.

Over the course of fall and winter, Brendan would go once a week to physical therapy and perform several exercises for an hour. The physical therapists who helped Brendan were never the same, but used the same methods to help him.

No matter what Brendan tried though, nothing worked. At best, every routine that they had him do only offered temporary relief.

Nevertheless, both podiatrists agreed that Brendan’s leg wasn’t so bad that he needed surgery, although it was not out of the question. It frustrated Brendan that his foot remained in the same condition as when he started, and both the podiatrists and physical therapists, who determined that there was nothing more that they could do for him, eventually discharged him.

Cheryl Mattingly

Brendan’s experiences reminded me of several of the case studies that Cheryl Mattingly did of the occupational therapists in her 1998 book Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience. The first thing that comes to mind is in the first chapter, when Mattingly discusses the little time that doctors actually get to spend with their patients.

As Mattingly explains, a doctor’s work is “fast and efficient. Doctors move quickly in the hospital wards. Their time is expensive. They cannot afford to linger too long in any one spot” (p. 21).

Brendan’s podiatrists functioned in a similar manner. While they were always helpful in dispensing medical advice to Brendan, they never got to know him at a personal level.

As Mattingly discusses in the same chapter about the level of time that a doctor spends with their patients, she goes on to explain that it is usually the medical staff who work for the doctor that spend the most time with their patients.

From Mattingly’s perspective, health professionals such as therapists and nurses are where “things move more slowly here. These professionals may spend an hour or more a day with a patient, and some of this may be quite informal” (p. 21).

Much of Brendan’s “clinical healing” found him spend the most time at physical therapy. The physical therapists who interacted with Brendan could relate with him in the sense that they too had been involved in sports.

Like Brendan, they had also been involved in sports-related injuries, which required them to step away from their sport and were able to bounce back through physical therapy. They were always quick to tell him that just as they got better through physical therapy, the same could happen for Brendan, allowing him to go back to running again.

Unfortunately, Brendan’s condition never did get better. No matter what he tried, he only experienced temporary relief.

Every time his physical therapists related their success stories to him, it only served to frustrate him, making him feel like his situation was hopeless.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Mattingly discusses how therapists “find themselves in the difficult position of trying to give hope to a patient while also gradually letting the patient know a very dark probable future” (p. 73).

The physical therapists meant well when they tried to cheer up Brendan, but it only had the opposite effect of pushing him into depression, as he felt that maybe he was doing something wrong.

Health professionals who draw on past experiences with their patients to help them with new patients is another topic of discussion that Mattingly touched upon.

As Mattingly explains, “Therapists inevitably encounter situations with ‘pre-understandings’ which guide their access to their patients” (p. 160).

As an example, Mattingly cited when a therapist worked with two oncology patients with similar backgrounds named Joe and Bob. After her success with Joe, “with whom she’d had great success teaching relaxation and visualization techniques” (p. 159), she thought that the same results could be produced for Bob, because “her past experience suggested possibilities for her relationship with Bob and thus she saw the two as similar from a highly committed stance” (p. 160).

As the therapist would come to learn, however, “Bob wanted nothing of her relaxation techniques and he pleasantly but steadfastly refused any help from her” (p. 159). The therapist was never able to connect with Bob, and after he was let go, she never saw him again.

Brendan’s situation was somewhat similar, although he genuinely did try to do everything that was asked of him. Nevertheless, nothing worked, and he was eventually let go.

Brendan’s “Three-Fold Present” and “Clinical Healing”

If there is anything positive that Brendan learned from his visits to the podiatrist or physical therapy, it was that it allowed him to look back at his past and see where he went wrong as an athlete.

Mattingly discusses in her work the concept of time as a “three-fold present,” which is when “the present has meaning not only or even most importantly as an extension of the past; it particularly has meaning as part of a story toward which we are heading” (p. 64).

The medical attention that Brendan received wasn’t able to help heal his injured foot, but he now at the very least knew how he should take care of himself in the event that he ever went back to running again in the future. In that sense, Brendan’s “clinical healing” wasn’t a complete failure, even if the state of his foot remains the same.

Brendan’s time as an athlete was put to an end when he injured his foot, and sought medical attention that was unable to help him. The podiatrists and physical therapists that Brendan interacted with held similarities that were reminiscent of the occupational therapists and patients that were studied by Cheryl Mattingly.

While Brendan’s foot wasn’t able to heal, he at the very least was able to reflect on his past as an athlete, and learned how to take better care of himself in the event that he could go back to running in the future, reflecting the concept of time that Mattingly refers to as the “three-fold present.”

While Brendan’s foot remaining injured makes his time in “clinical healing” a failure, he can at least hope for a future where he can run again.

Author's Note: This essay was originally published on July 24, 2026 at Medium.

References/External Links

1. Mattingly, C. (1998). Healing dramas and clinical plots: the narrative structure of experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

2. https://dornsife.usc.edu/cherylmattingly/ (Cheryl Mattingly’s biography)