DO YOU EVER WONDER IF YOU ARE REALLY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN YOUR PATIENTS’ HEALTH? Does the routine disregard for chiropractic by so many in the legal and medical professions ever challenge your faith, confidence, and belief in the service you provide? If so, you may be in need of an attitude adjustment. I hope the personal story I am about to share will realign your spirit.
My story began nearly fifty years ago when I suffered a serious hyperextension injury to my neck as a running back during the third game of my senior football season. The injury left me with an instability of the C5-C6 motor unit that resulted in a lifetime of paresthesia in my hands as well as frequent headaches. Everything happens for a reason. It was chiropractic care for the treatment of that injury that inspired me to pursue the profession.
“Everything happens for a reason. It was chiropractic care forthe treatment of that injury that inspired me to pursue the profession.”
Over the next thirty years, I sustained a number of additional head and neck injuries from such activities as cutting trees, running mud runs and other obstacle-style races, and the never-ending adventure of helping my wife raise our very large and active family. But it wasn’t until a freak accident on a rainy Wednesday night in 2011 that I fully appreciated the power of chiropractic care.
I was having a rough night sleeping and moved to my screened-in patio room where I hoped the sound of the rain falling on the vinyl roof would help me sleep. I walked through the glass door connecting the kitchen to the outside room, leaving the door open behind me. Soon I was asleep on one of the sofas. I didn’t realize that a houseguest who was also having trouble sleeping decided to do the same thing. But when he entered the room, he closed the glass door behind him.
When I awoke during the night and went to use the bathroom, I walked full force into the glass door. I mean FULL FORCE. I felt the impact to my forehead instantly and heard what seemed like every joint in my already unstable neck crack loudly. I yelled out, “I did not need this!” but had no idea how bad things were about to get.
Within the next thirty minutes, a deep, throbbing sub-occipital headache set in. The left half of my face went numb and became hypersensitive to the touch. Over the next few hours, every brainstem function began to break down. My heartrate accelerated about thirty bpm and my breathing became labored and painful. I had to urinate every ten minutes. It became difficult to regulate my body temperature and I went in and out of fevers every hour or two. First the chills, then the fever, then the fever would break and bring intense sweating necessitating the changing of bed clothes every hour or so.
I was unable to work the remainder of the week and also unable to eat due to an intense nausea. Resorting to various pain medications for relief proved useless, which resulted in total sleep deprivation for the next five nights. By Monday, I had lost more than ten pounds, had not slept one minute and could barely breathe above a shallow panting. My daughter, an amazing massage therapist, tried to give me some relief with essential oils and gentle massage but to no avail. My family was alarmed at my deteriorating condition and, frankly, so was I.
At this point, I asked my wife to call my colleague and friend, Dr. Robert Biddle, and ask if he could see me at the end of his work day. I was struggling to breathe, totally exhausted, and unable to drive myself there. When Dr. Biddle entered the adjusting room, I was sitting in a chair with my head against the wall panting weakly. With a look of surprise and horror, he exclaimed, “My Lord, John, whatever happened to you? Are you dying?” I said, “I feel like I’m dying, I hit my head walking through a glass door.” And then I pleaded, “Please, pleeease adjust my neck.”
“Sometimes it takes the doctor becoming the patient with a serious problem to remind him or her of the value of the service we provide.”
After examining my neck, Dr. Biddle gave me one of Dr. John Faye’s famous condyle lift adjustments before laying me down onto his adjusting table. He then gave me a much needed full spine adjustment, focusing mainly on my cervical spine. As I walked out of his office, I was already starting to feel the intense headache lightening and my breathing becoming less labored and shallow. Upon arriving home, I went to bed and fell into a deep sleep that lasted more than six hours. By the next morning, the facial numbness was gone as well as the headache and nausea. I was able to eat some fruit and started to feel human again. Sometimes it takes the doctor becoming the patient with a serious problem to remind him or her of the value of the service we provide.
Because of the extreme exhaustion and weakness from no sleep for five nights and the loss of nearly fifteen pounds, I still wasn’t able to return to work for three more days. I saw Dr. Biddle daily that week and continued to receive care for the next few weeks until I was back in “fighting shape” again. During one of our encounters, I said to my good friend, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of an adjustment or doubt the benefits of the tremendous service that you render to your patients each day!”
I believe it was B.J. Palmer who said that if the cause of your problem is a vertebral subluxation, the only remedy is a specific chiropractic adjustment. Maybe because most of the patients we see on any given day are coming in for “maintenance” adjustments, we don’t see the dramatic changes in their physiology as I experienced in my story above. What we have to realize is that we are preventing our patients from slowly watching their physiology deteriorate over time.
Whether someone walks into a glass door like I did or is just experiencing the inevitable health decline from years of uncorrected subluxations, the result will be the same. I repeat, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF AN ADJUSTMENT! Keep up the good fight, my friends! Until next time.
Dr. John Wohar graduated Summa Cum Laude from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in 1981. He and his wife, Linda, are the proud parents often children and twenty grandchildren. He practices now from his home office in California, PA where he continues to develop his Viscero-Somatic Reflex Technique. He can be reached at [email protected].
