Working through pain

Laura Schmitt remembers traveling to a physical therapy conference in Washington, D.C., and, by the end of the conference, she had difficulty moving as she stepped off the train in Newark with her luggage.

"My right knee was on fire," she recalled.

Her knee troubles started decades earlier, with a high school basketball injury. As an adult, she had an ACL reconstruction and revision and had been living with knee osteoarthritis (OA) for nearly 20 years. Physical therapy helped ease the pain and staved off an inevitable knee replacement for several years.

"I had trouble walking around that conference; my knee was swollen and throbbing," she said. "Once I started losing confidence on stairs, the pain tipped the scale. Surgeons always told me, 'You'll know when you're ready,' and that was my moment."

As a PT at the University of Delaware's Physical Therapy Clinic, Schmitt helped others with OA while her own knee swelled on the job between teaching students and assisting patients. She isn't alone.

One in three Americans says they face arthritis-attributable work limitations, according to new research by Daniel White, associate professor of physical therapy. White's analysis of findings from the 2023 National Health Interview Survey was recently published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research.