About 50 friends and supporters of Morgan Sayre and Jay Ruban showed up April 18 to celebrate the grand opening and ribbon cutting of Root Rehab Physical Therapy in La Grange, which the married couple will operate together.
“We do treat injuries, sprains and post-surgeries, but we do so much more than that,” Sayre said before the ribbon cutting. “We try to address things that are chronic. If you’ve got back pain that’s been bugging you for five years, for example, that is our bread and butter. We’d love to solve those problems.”
Sayre, a Hinsdale native, completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri before earning her doctorate in physical therapy from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine. She then went on to complete a three-year specialized fellowship with The Manual Therapy Institute in Chicago.
Tinley Park native Ruban did his undergraduate work at Western Michigan University, after which he graduated with a doctorate in physical therapy from Northeastern University in Boston, where he worked with Division 1 athletes in the school’s Sports Residency Program. He is currently finishing a fellowship in Orthopedic Manual Therapy at the Manual Therapy Institute.
Services offered at Root Rehab, 4727 S. Willow Springs Road, include manual therapy; orthopedic rehab tending to spinal care, tendon rehab, and extremity care; sports rehab, including treating injury and in-season management; pelvic floor therapy and post-surgical rehab, according to clinic officials.
Sayre said Root Therapy’s approach to physical therapy was incorporated into its name.
“We’re really trying to do more prevention for surgeries or issues that pop up in their lives, getting to the ground floor. The name Root Rehab came from us trying to get to the root causes,” she said.
Sayre began her physical therapy career by working out of her Chicago home, going door to door and doing house calls like an old fashioned general practitioner.
“I had a table and I had a bag — I called it my Mary Poppins bag — for all my tools and things I needed,” she said. “Once we moved out to the suburbs, we realized as we were growing and that we needed roots, for lack of a better word, and we were trying to find a home space.”
Roots Rehab had a soft opening in March and has been slowly transitioning at-home patients to the new facility.
Sayre noted that the focus of the services offered might change somewhat with the move to the suburbs, but that it would continue to serve older clientele.
“I still have patients in their seventies and eighties who are just trying to move better,” she said. “In the city I would get patients coming from the suburbs or people working downtown.”
La Grange Business Association Executive Director Dan Mulka was on hand for the event and was upbeat about the new addition to the local business community.
“I think this is just another great asset to area residents, or anybody coming into the area just looking for excellence and knowing they’re working with doctors that know they’re going to help with their physical therapy,” he said. “When you’re talking about yourself, you want the best, you don’t want a discount middle man, you want to make sure the body’s in full tune.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
