Ironphysio: A Patient's Perspective

Reno Bianco playing soccer at St. Joseph's Prep

My name is Reno Bianco. I attend St. Joseph’s Prep and am in the class of 2026. I have played soccer my whole life and started running indoor and outdoor track my junior year. During my freshman year, I tore my ACL about one week into my soccer season. I was given a pair of crutches and told to schedule a surgery appointment to reconstruct my ACL. I was physically and mentally broken. No one noticed. No one asked. After surgery, I was instructed to begin physical therapy. I rehabbed with one of the most well known physical therapy facilities in the area. During my appointments, I was one of 3 patients that my physical therapist was treating at a time and was hardly receiving sufficient attention. After my rehab, I still managed to get back to sport, but I really wasn’t ready. I did not feel like I was prepared physically or mentally to get back on the soccer field but it seemed like no one cared. No one asked. 

After getting back to soccer, I tore my MPFL in my left knee in the winter of my sophomore year. I was given crutches and told to schedule a surgery appointment to repair my MPFL. No one cared. No one asked. Once again, I found myself physically and mentally broken. I was staring down the path of another long rehab just a year after rehabbing my ACL. 

After my MPFL surgery, my cousin recommended I try Ironphysio so I decided to give it a try. I live in South Jersey, so each appointment was about an hour car ride each way. In my first appointment, I remember Dr. Jayson asked me how I was doing mentally. I froze for a second. No one had bothered to ask this before. Dr. Jayson was patient while I mustered up the courage to give him my real answer: I was struggling, bad. He assured me that he had a plan for my rehab and I was going to return as a stronger, faster, and more confident athlete. I hobbled out on crutches after my first appointment with a smile on my face bigger than the one I ever had when I was healthy. I knew I was going to get back to exactly where I wanted to be. As my mom put it, “[I] fell in love with Ironphysio in the first 30 minutes and [she] knew [she] had a lot of driving in front of her.” We knew it was going to be worth it. 

During my appointments at Ironphysio, I was the only person Jayson worked with during the hour. Rehab was hard. He challenged me in ways that prepared my body to get back to playing my sport. He checked in on me even on days I was not scheduled to be in the clinic. Most importantly, he cared. I returned to sport 2-3 months earlier than expected, but unlike last time, I felt ready. Deeper than returning to sport, Dr. Jayson showed me the importance of a physical therapist building a connection with their patients. The better you know your patient, the more you can help them, physically and mentally. I have found that many of the physical therapists that I have worked with overlooked the mental struggle that comes with being an injured athlete, but Ironphysio values each patient the same as everyone else and that is to say they value them as special, capable, and unique. Ironphysio gave me the confidence to return to playing soccer, try a new sport, and share my story so that I can try to make people going through what I have gone through feel seen, safe, and important.