By the end of the first week we were packed up and driving back to Brisbane. Mum’s car seat was fully reclined because she couldn’t sit upright. Dad drove us all the way home with Mum crying in pain.
Over the years I’ve been asked the question “ What made you decide to become a chiropractor?”.
My “chiropractic miracle story” isn’t actually my own. It’s my mother’s. It’s through witnessing her recovery that I became interested in chiropractic and pursued it as a career.
I was in grade 10 and it was Christmas holidays. John Lennon had just been killed. The song “Imagine” was playing everywhere. My family had decided to spend 2 weeks at a holiday park in northern N.S.W. near Byron Bay. The accommodation was “cabin style”. In truth we’re talking caravans with the wheels taken off. You can imagine how supportive the beds were.
There was swimming, horse-riding, beach cricket, volleyball etc. A real outdoorsy kind of place. My mother decided to get fit and tone up by going for a long walk along the beach every morning and every evening. This appears to have been her trigger. Not to mention the bad bed and the long car trip.
By the end of the first week we were packed up and driving back to Brisbane. Mum’s car seat was fully reclined because she couldn’t sit upright. Dad drove us all the way home with Mum crying in pain.
My mother was admitted to hospital and placed in traction for 2 weeks. Basically, a belt was strapped around her waist while she was in the bed, there was a pulley system above her at the foot of the bed and weights were attached to the pulleys. She wasn’t allowed to get out of the bed for anything.
Two weeks later, we carried her from the hospital and set her up on the loungeroom floor where she remained for the next 4 weeks. I recall stepping over her to turn on the television.
The diagnosis was a prolapsed disc, she was not allowed to drive, she couldn’t return to work and her only hope was surgery.
That’s when the pamphlet arrived in the mail announcing the opening of a new chiropractic clinic.
The chiropractor treated her every day for 2 weeks by which time she was able to drive herself. She returned to work and still hasn’t had any surgery.
Shortly after that I became a patient and, well, you know how it ends.
Many chiropractors have similar stories to tell. The blinding migraines which responded to neck adjustments when nothing else worked. The rugby injury which responded to the tireless work of a local chiro when everyone else said “You have to learn to live with the pain”.
Unfortunately, as with my mother, a visit to the chiropractor is often the treatment of last resort. A little side trip on the way to the surgeon.
I wonder how much suffering could be avoided if seeing the chiro was nearer the top of the list rather than way down at the bottom.