Not So Bad, Maybe…
Saturday, May 10th – My good friend Tom P. in Palo Alto asked me a great question tonight about my re-exam chart. He asked if the 37% I was (sort of) bragging about and (sort of) feeling sad about was based on how far I had come from zero. That is: when I first walked in the door at Seaside Chiropractic on March 5th, for my initial examination, did I have ZERO capabilities? Or did I have ANY things that were okay on my initial exam?
His point was that if I had any motions that were not restricted on the first exam, then I was moving up from somewhere north of zero… so I could be quite a bit farther along than I thought. Oh, I really wanted that to be the case! But now that I look at the chart again, all those extremely teeny little letters and numbers, it IS a zero in the lower left-hand corner of the chart. And I recall that the only thing I could do at “admittance”, that wasn’t deemed “restricted” by Dr. K when he told Roseanna what to write down, was that I was able to touch my chin to my chest. AND THAT WAS ALL. So I have, indeed, been pretty much starting from zero. Sorry, Tom, it was a great idea, but… alas. I will have to live with 37% for a while. There will be another re-exam after 12 more sessions, which should put me somewhere in June. Hasta el proximo…
On Thursday last (as the Brits say), I had the pleasure of seeing a young 30something guy in the office being worked on by Dr. Klein. This guy has been going for chiropractic adjustments, off and on, since he was 12! I found it interesting to hear Dr. K say that he can feel the difference in joints that have been kept flexible since childhood, and joints that have just gone their own way, so to speak, and stuck together when they felt like it. I am pretty sure he said it better, but that’s how it seemed to me.
If I had known when I was younger what I know now… I think I would have found a chiropractor for my kids, not to mention myself. Now my babies range from 47 to 37, and have various degrees of aches and pains. Maybe some of them could have been avoided if they had had the benefit of chiropractic adjustments as children. There is an excellent college of chiropractic in Toronto, where they grew up. If I’d only taken the blinders off 40 years ago…
(But then there was my dad, not at that point only a voice in my head, saying, “Son of a gun! Look at that huge college of chiropractic! Can you beat that! You know, sweetheart, that stuff is such a bunch of hooey…” Okay, so I shouldn’t be blaming Daddy for my ignorance. It’s my own fault I didn’t look into it before. Thank goodness for CraigsList and that ad from David Klein, looking for an assistant in February!) 
Thanks again for reading — Betsy
3 comments
There is a bit of truth in both what you are saying, and what your friend said.
The graph is an imperfect graph, and yet the best tool chiropractic has developed yet.
The imperfection is that it relies on the measurement by the chiropractor. Where on objective finding is extremely bad the accuracy of the finding of the doctor is very high. As the objective finding improves, or if it was very minor to start with, that objective finding “can” but is not always less accurate.
The improvement on the graph is a percentage of the positive objective findings that were first found on the patient that have gone away since the first exam.
It starts at a baseline of where you were when you first walked in the door.
Much Love,
dk
Hi Betsy,
These are just numbers, so don’t lose sight of the most important factor: how you feel, and how you feel about yourself. As long as you are moving toward the goal, constancy is more important that speed. Remember, you have folks out here in Blogland cheering for you.
Tom P.
Thanks to both you, David, and you, Tom, for your comments. I am so glad somebody is actually reading this, and I’m not just casting my thoughts upon the waters — to mix a metaphor. Here’s to all of you in Blogland!
Betsy
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