Dr.Jessica Ray

Dr. Jessica, how are you? I’m doing great, how are you doing? Good, welcome, welcome. We are very pleased to have you start off our discussion with pelvic flow therapy. I want to introduce you with just reading your bio so we know who you are, what your background is, and all that good stuff.

So Dr. Jessica Ray is a doctorally educated and board certified family nurse practitioner. For over 12 years of progressive experience with patient care, clinical leadership, and operation. Her journey in medicine began as an ER trauma nurse where she honed her skills managing high acuity patients.

After her time in the ER, Jessica transitioned into functional medicine as a nurse practitioner providing concierge care tailored to addressing the root cause of her patients. Jessica currently practices at Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine, a renowned psychiatry practice committed to treating chronic pelvic pain. She provides personalized care to patients of all genders, addressing a wide range of complex pelvic pain conditions.
Jessica is passionate about empowering her patients through education, advocating her pelvic health awareness within her community. So wonderful, we are excited to have you here and thank you for being part of this. We are looking forward.

Of course, thank you for having me. You’re welcome. So let me see, get started with some questions here.

I have them right here. Yeah. I think a good one to start would be to see, tell us about how you got into this field and how all that came about.
Like what made you decide to be here and do this? I would say for most healthcare providers, I think the pandemic gave me a whole perspective on how I wanted to practice medicine. My journey into pelvic health only came through when I was working in functional, as a functional nurse practitioner. I started seeing patients on a more holistic basis from like a root cause analysis.

And I was realizing that there was a recurring pattern where patients were suffering from chronic pelvic pain, but struggled to find answers. And they would share their journey of seeing multiple providers undergoing like countless tests. And they were still like not having a clear diagnosis of, or like an effective treatment plan of what’s going on.

And so their frustration and their sense of isolation, you would say resonated with me because I realized that the pelvic health was an area where I can make a difference. And I began exploring more about pelvic health. And I was fascinated about how complex and interconnected the systems are.

And it wasn’t just about the organs or just the muscles. It was a blend of musculoskeletal, neurological, and even emotional factors altogether. And so the challenge of unraveling these complexities attracted me because I had that functional background where I could do that.
And so I knew that this is where I wanted to focus my career. And it was an area of medicine that you can say can make a huge impact on somebody’s life, like improving that aspect. So I think helping them regain their ability to go to work, engage in relationships, and simply enjoy their daily activities was without chronic pelvic pain altogether.

And that decision kind of led me to find pelvic rehabilitation medicine. And now I specialize in all genders, helping them find relief from pelvic pain. And it’s been incredibly fulfilling at this point to just see my patients transition from coming in, from having pain every single day, and then having very minimal or managed symptoms.

So I think that that overall is very, very rewarding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

Yes, I totally can relate to the root cause kind of therapist because that’s who I am as well. And I really would like them to leave and receive treatment that sticks, like it’s not going to come back with the same force. And so that’s wonderful.
That’s wonderful. And so, I’m sorry. I was saying that, like, I think that that’s the whole beauty of it, like how people transition through life when they’re, or through different roles, I should say.

And I think for myself, like having that emergency background, I like the clinical foundations to be able to think critically and decisively, while also being able to focus more holistic in matters. I think that that kind of pieced everything together for my role today. That’s wonderful.
Yeah. So talk to us about how your practice is different from others. I’m sure there are other pelvic nurse practitioners around, but how do you stand out? How are you different? So at Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine, we’re truly filling in the gap in healthcare for pelvic pain patients.
Since 2017, PRM has provided an innovative solution to help patients that are dealing with chronic pain help manage it. And so chronic pelvic pain is overlooked. It’s mission is to decrease the time that patients are suffering from chronic pelvic pain symptoms.
And so we offer a non-operative approach in treating chronic pelvic pain. It’s called the PRM Protocol. It’s a patented office-based procedure that I do here in the office to treat chronic abdominal pelvic pain by directing the treatment towards reducing the inflammation with the muscles, as well as the nerves.

So it’s truly addressing the root cause of the muscles and the nerves being a generator for their symptoms. And so the treatment itself, it consists of a series of six to seven weeks where we’re doing ultrasound guided nerve block and trigger point injections to target the inflammation in the pelvis that’s generating nerve pain, pelvic floor muscle spasms. And so what we do here, it’s not a band-aid approach.
We’re trying to truly reverse the inflammation that’s happening due to different disease processes, such as like endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, and we’re retraining those muscles and nerves on how to properly function. So it is a different, unique approach that we’re not just treating even just the pelvic floor. When they’re walking through the door, we’re looking at each system.
We’re looking at what their emotional setting is as well, as well as their lifestyles. How are they sleeping? How is this all interconnected? No, that sounds very holistic, like the whole person. And yes, I can see how that can go a long way to ensure that it sticks.
I was going to ask about the endometriosis part, but you mentioned that. So that answers that you do handle the endometriosis as a diagnosis.

Yeah, for sure.

I think endometriosis overall, as many know, it’s like one in nine women have endometriosis. It’s only, it’s surgically diagnosed. And so it kind of, it often gets missed because they’re not getting the timely workup as they should.

And where we kind of come on in is that we’re trying to encourage patients to see the full model that there is, we’re trying to manage their symptoms before going into surgery. So we do the injection series before as a prehabilitation to help reduce the inflammation and get the space ready for surgery. And then we do a series afterwards to help address any surgical symptoms that they may have afterwards, help continue reducing the inflammation.

And so as a model itself, there is a non-operative as well as an operative approach to endo. Oh, that is wonderful to know. Thank you.
So practice, who would you say is your ideal patient and what do you like treating most? Like what’s your favorite diagnosis? So I truly love treating patients. Any patient is like, I would say my favorite patient. I don’t have like a favorite diagnosis.
Honestly, I think it’s very rewarding to see patients that have been coming with symptoms that are debilitating and helping them overcome that and live a pain-free life and seeing them enjoy their life is just highly gratifying. So I do feel any patients pretty rewarding. I do find that the younger population is a little bit more rewarding, I would say, just because they just want to enjoy life, you know, and they want to just continue their journey, have no issues.

So the symptoms that they are kind of dealing with, I would say dyspnea is probably the biggest one for me that I love helping my patients like kind of overcome that. And I think endometriosis overall, because it has like a full beginning to end model to it. So I think those two are probably my closest to me.

Okay, good to know. So how can patients get to you? What is the process of them wanting to work with you? So we have 14 offices throughout the United States. So we do have a call center that helps facilitate most of our booking appointments.
They can go to our website pelvicrehabilitation.com and they can kind of send a message to there and the call center can reach out as well. They can call our offices either way. I think that’s the best way.

If they do have providers that they’re working with, whether it’s their gynecologist, your gynecologist, their pelvic floor physical therapist, they can have them reach out to us as well. We love to collaborate. As you already know, we’ve worked together with patients and seeing their success with both of our experiences just gets them in the right direction a lot sooner.

Yeah, I agree with that. The time that we compress in coordination, I think is impressive, like how quickly they can get better results. So I agree.
One other thing I think that we do a little bit differently is that we do offer free consultations where if patients don’t know if this is something that they want to do or if their symptoms or if this is like the right location of their symptoms, they can give us a call and we can do what’s called a pre-consultation to see if they’re a good patient to bring on in for for a new patient visit. So they can do that as well. And I can go over a 15 minute conversation with them, see what’s going on, kind of guide them through it.

And then it will be a little bit more encouraging for them as well to hear it. Yeah, yeah, because that is very nice as in because most people don’t know what this is involved in, what it is that to expect. So I think that is very valuable that you guys are doing that, a 15 minute consult.
Would that be like regardless of insurance and just… Yeah, it’s fully complimentary. Honestly, it’s just one, we want to help as many patients as we can. And so sometimes patients don’t want to commit right away to a new patient visit or they just want to know a little bit more about it.
So I think it’s a nice soft introduction that we’re able to provide them with as well. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a good one.

Thank you. So tell us a nugget that you’d like to share that you feel that most people should know but don’t know. What would you say? Well, I would say definitely that there is a mind-body connection and especially when it comes to pain and many people don’t realize that chronic pain over time, whether it’s pelvic pain or the pain is generating from elsewhere can actually rewire the brain over time and create something called central sensitization.

And it just means that the nervous system has become hypersensitive and it amplifies the pain signals. So physically speaking, what is actually a paper cut, it actually feels like their hand is getting cut off, for example. So it’s definitely a hypersensitivity that ends up happening.
And over time, the pain can persist and it rewires the brain. And so over time, patients can become more anxious, they can become more ruminating about their thoughts. And so there is a mind-body component to it.

So while you’re treating your physical symptoms, it’s also important to support your mental well-being as well as part of this. And so doing things like deep breathing exercises, yoga, journaling, mindful meditation, these are all natural techniques that you can do to help kind of calm down the central nervous system in conjunction. And I always like my patients to know that we can retrain the nervous system.
So it’s not something that they have to live with forever, but it is something that we do want to give attention to as well as their physical symptoms. Yes. Oh, that is an awesome nugget.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Anything specific you would like to promote to the audience around health and wellness of your services or anything like that? I would say definitely emphasizing the importance of not ignoring your pelvic pain or dysfunction, pain during intercourse, pain during urination, symptoms during urination, urinary frequency, urgency, incomplete bladder emptying, rectal symptoms, pain, constipation, pressure. These are all symptoms that are not considered normal. So definitely, if you’re having symptoms, don’t suffer in silence.
There’s definitely treatment that are available. You have help from physical therapy that can help with different modalities to help downtrain and relax those muscles and nerves. Because what I’ve been finding is that a lot of patients, they live in embarrassment for a long time, and they don’t want to bring it to attention.

And so they’re going chronically six months, two years, three years down the road with symptoms and not really truly addressing it so that there are options that are available. With the symptoms that I just mentioned, the pelvic rehabilitation, we really do focus on that we do offer a comprehensible body approach. So we’re not just treating the symptoms, we’re treating everything at that point.
So and if there’s something that your body is telling you is off, then listen to your body, honestly speaking, you’re probably right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you so much. We’re taking their time to address and to answer a lot of questions. And I pretty many find this helpful and useful in helping resolve the pelvic issues.

So thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. You’re welcome. My pleasure.