Beginning of the Journey

Monday, March 10, 2008 –  I have to begin this blog with a bit of a retrospective, so you’ll understand how extremely unlikely it is that I find myself planning to sign an agreement for a year of treatment by Dr. David Klein of Seaside Chiropractic.

I grew up in Massachusetts: a kid during the 40s, a teenager i the 50s. My dad was an obstetrician.  At that time, the medical profession took a pretty dim view of chiropractic. I don’t know how many times I heard him say, “They’re all a bunch of quacks, sweetheart!” or “They call it chiropractic medicine, but it’s all a bunch of hooey!”  I didn’t even realize I was carrying my father’s prejudice into my own adulthood. Occasionally a friend would remark that she had had a chiropractic “adjustment” and felt a lot better, from whatever had been ailing her. I would smile a mysterious Mona-Lisa-like smile and think, “Boy, you’ll never catch me letting somebody mess with my spine! It’s all a bunch of hooey.”

To add to this one-sided viewpoint, in 1996 I married a research neurochemist and moved to the San Diego area. My husband is a Science Guy who has spent a lifetime working in labs, devising the experiments that lead to development of drugs for various conditions. His first plan of attack in any illness, injury, or ailment is MEDICATION. He is very unenthusiastic about alternative medicine in any of its forms. Although I have nothing against medication, and I do take a lot of prescriptions for my various conditions, I have always been interested in alternative medicine. Nevertheless, I remained definitely skeptical about chiropractic, although I really knew nothing about it — except that it was a bunch of hooey, you know.

So how did I get to this point? Well, I answered a job ad in CraigsList in February, for a part-time administrative assistant to a doctor. The office is located in La Jolla, only about 20 minutes’ drive for me. I had no idea what a huge change was on the way.

I received an e-mail invitation to a group interview, and a request to look over the doctor’s website (www.bodyabcs.com) and read the cartoon books there. What impressed me most about the website — apart from the wealth of information about chiropractic in general, and Seaside Chiropractic in particular — was the large number of testimonial letters from patients. One in particular caught my eye, from the doctor who heads the UCSD Pain Management Clinic, which I had briefly attended last summer.  This doctor has been referring patients to Dr. Klein for years, for pain management. In addition, he and his family are patients of Dr. Klein’s. That was good enough for me!

After the group interview, Dr. Klein offered all the applicants the opportunity of a free consult, just to show each of us what he does. I took advantage of the invitation the very next day.

The diagnostic “robot” (I encourage you to read about it on the website, it’s fascinating) revealed that many of my vertebrae were “stuck” and unmoving. This was not surprising. I turned 70 in January, and over the past 12 years I’ve had two total hip replacements, three hip revisions, and two total knee replacements.  My orthopedic surgeon has said I have the worst case of osteoarthritis he’s ever seen. I’ve been expecting to have both shoulders replaced and my right foot fused sometime in the next two to three years. When I’m asked about my 1-to10 pain level, I usually say, “I pretty much live at 4-to-5.” It’s bearable, I’ve learned to deal with it, I walk with a cane and I get on with my life — but I am always hurting to some degree, and often quite a lot. I take pretty strong painkillers, several every day. They help a lot with the symptoms, but they do nothing for the underlying causes of the pain.

A couple of weeks later, I got an appointment at Seaside Chiropractic. The first half hour or so was devoted to education about how chiropractic works, performed by Dr. Klein’s delightful assistant, Roseanna.  The information was a parallel to what’s in one of the cartoon books on the website, “What You Need To Know,” and I had read that. Still, I was impressed with the emphasis on educating the patient about what chiropractic is, and what will be happening during adjustments. There was definitely plenty of opportunity to voice any questions, concerns, or fears the patient might have about the process or its results. Roseanna also took a very complete medical history, asking about all falls and injuries I had had during my entire life! Amazing, how those memories come back when you search for them…

Dr. Klein then had me lie face-down on a special table while he checked my vertebrae manually. Actually, this was quite a trick for me — it was the first time in probably a decade that I had succeeded in lying prone.  But Dr. Klein asked me if I was “down with this,” and I was.  Next were some tests to see how I moved, what my range of motion in different areas was, how flexible or inflexible different joints were.

And finally, Dr. Klein performed my first chiropractic adjustment. After reading all the testimonials on the website, I was a tiny bit disappointed not to have a major spiritual experience, or an amazing increase in olfactory or auditory sensation. Just a little more ease in turning my neck from side to side, maybe fewer crackling noises inside as I moved… that was all I felt. But I’m in this for the long haul. If it took me seven decades to get “stuck” to this degree, I don’t expect it all to come loose in one hour’s treatment. The next morning I felt as though I’d been run over by a truck. EVERYTHING ached. By noon, however, all was as usual in the pain department.

Although I didn’t get the job in the office, I’m sure that answering that ad was a life-changing decision for me. I would otherwise never have come to Seaside Chiropractic, and wouldn’t have realized that there might be another way than surgery and heavy medication to reduce my pain.

It’s never too late to learn and experience something new!