physical therapy essay- need fine tuning

im in the final stages of getting this important essay ready. thanks in advance for anyone's help.

prompt: Describe your decision making process in choosing physical therapy as a career choice versus other health care careers

A personal mantra that I find myself consistently referring to is "This is where I am. This is where I want to be. I can get there and a little more". This mantra is how I force myself to accomplish a goal and how I approach life. This mindset is a factor that has driven my interest in pursuing Physical Therapy compared to other medical professions. Like other medical fields, physical therapy aims to heal patients back a normal functioning. But unlike other medical fields, a great physical therapist can push for normal functioning and more.

As a child I was never interested in physical therapy. I placed it in the same schema as elderly care and left it there. I was interested though in other forms of rehabilitative sciences from massage therapy to holistic medicine. This interest stems my own experiences with these modalities of healing. I have received massage therapy accompanied with with cold and hot pack application for knee pain following a meniscectomy. I have also had electrical stimulation therapy combined with isometric exercise for a sprained wrist from an acupuncturist. The most influential modality to me was bodywork done on my leg by a Chinese Dit Da. This treatment reduced the swelling and returned weight bearing capabilities to a severe ankle sprain in a matter of hours. I developed a great interest in the mechanics of how these type of treatments work and started to slowly learn more about it. I later discovered that the same principles of these modalities were offered in physical therapy. **

Now that I am older, I started to notice certain things about these treatments that I once deemed the epitome of rehabilitation. I notice that the treatments were inconsistent with different people and that my age played a big role during my treatments. The second problem that I realized was the lack of a maintenance effort to help maintain and improve my condition. I would often return for more treatments to get rid of developing pain. I now know that I could have prevented the reoccurring pain with a few exercises. These realizations about the previously mentioned treatment modalities has changed how I view physical therapy. I see t now as a collection of different modalities to help people recover and more importantly maintain their physical and functioning health.

Ever since my first time applying two years ago, I have solidify my determination in physical therapy. I have spent the last year and a half improving my application for physical therapy schools. I am constantly learning new things about the field including the basic reasons for certain therapy application, the management of a private physical therapy clinic along with multiple sites, the basic roles of health insurance policies, and the new development of exercises used for treatments. I am very appreciative of the knowledge I have accumulated recently and I now strive to obtain the education needed to diagnose and treat patients to normal functioning and hopefully a little further.

** feel like the ending of this paragraph is too vague but i feel like if i put too much it spoils the rest of the essay. any thought?

- the items that i bolded are parts that i feel like i need rewording
- also i notice im repeating somethings but not entirely sure which parts. if you feel like im repeating certain things too much, please mention it.

thanks