I want to tell you a story

I want to tell you a story, but before I do, I want you to know why I'm telling it.  

My name is Chad.  I'm married to a wonderful woman, have two dogs, and a baby on the way.  I'm also a doctor, but not of medicine.  There are other types, ya know.  I am what is, to avoid confusion (although it's still sometimes confusing), called an Upper Cervical Practitioner.  Rewind the clock to when I was 23 years old and my health had been on the decline for a long time.  By that point, I could not focus - my mind would dart in a billion directions every time it was quiet.  I had constipation and reflux (otherwise known as GERD aka heartburn).  I'd been in pain, be it in the lower back or knee or most recently, at that point, in the neck, shoulder, and upper back.  One thing after another, starting about three years after a car accident that saw my mom rear end a truck going about 40 MPH (I was a 9 year old passenger). 

Other details about my life will follow in future entries, suffice to say that, at a very young age, my health was in the proverbial toilet.  By the time I was 23, I had given up on medicine because it didn't work.  I tried physical therapy and that didn't work.  Chiropractic helped me tremendously for a while, but ultimately it stopped working.  Like acupuncture and massage, chiropractic became a band-aid.  I basically had become an experiment for every treatment option out there, but I wasn't getting well.  If anything, I was getting worse.  I made bad decisions, I was angry, and I was chock full of anxiety. 

Enter Upper Cervical Care...

I decided to attend a guest lecture at the school I was attending.  I was blown away at what I heard.  It was logical; it made sense.  Before ever actually becoming a patient, I set up a guest lecture for the lecturing doctor at my apartment complex.  Everything that I heard was music to my ears.  It gave me hope that I might get well.  As a gift, the doctor gave me a book that night.  It was called, "Palmer's Law of Life," the 36th volume in a lengthy series written by the man who had developed "Upper Cervical Care." 

I've it numerous times over the years.  Recently, though, I was watching a film with my wife called "Julie and Julia," about a young woman who finds inspiration in a cook book written long ago by Julia Child.  She decides to blog about it while putting its recipes to action.  Always one to look for renewed professional inspiration, I've decided to do the same with Palmer's work.  From now until the end of the year, I'm going to re-read "The Law of Life" and electronically take you on the journey of my thoughts, as I more specifically put his words into action.

So, I want to tell you a story, but before I do, I want you to think about something: Why is the United States one of the sickest countries in the world?