Excellent enthusiasm and results Chris! Your distinction between doing it for the folks and doing because you need new patients is huge. Thanks for the reminder. I am finding that when I can embrace that difference, COW or not, practice is fun, energetic, fulfilling and profitable. It really is taking care of more people for the right reason. I have wanted to chime in somewhere to say that the last quarter of 2010 was our biggest ever. We start this new year in the best position we have ever been in financially, emotionally, etc. Every January my lizard brain kicks in and anxiety appears out of nowhere. But yesterday we treated 50 people. Another unfounded fear. I am so pleased about being part of the future of chiropractic right now. All of you PODlings that add to our life and the life of DCM are so valuable. Thanks.
On a personal note, many of you know that my mom has been in a senior residence home since March '10. She is anemic, hypothyroid, needs knee replacements, her rotator cuff muscles are irreparable bilaterally, she is incontinent, and one of the dingy Neurologist she visited called it parkinsons. She takes 21 meds a day. Her days are spent doing speech therapy and when medicaid will pay, PT. My dad and mom had to get a legal financial divorce in the summer. The State let dad keep the house, where he lives alone now, and a van. All other accounts were liquidated and the State kept everything else. Because they did not have 7 accounts, they could not afford a van that could move her in her wheelchair. For her to come home for an afternoon or evening requires me to be there to move her in and out of the van they do have. Now mom is broken and on welfare and I get to watch. Her spine is crumbling and she slumps farther to the right in her wheel chair everyday. Hope is a pretty rare commodity.
I could not take it anymore. She is only 71. I got online and bought a used hilo table that I could prop her up and then lay her down and do what, ADJUST her. The man who runs the senior home gave me a room to work out of. I got nothing else. A table and an activator. I work on her several times a week for about the last month. On xmas eve, my brother, who lives elsewhere and I were trying to load mom and her knees simply would not move. So there I stood, trying to keep 240lbs of dead weight from hitting the ground, as my skiny brother stood watching. When we finally got her loaded, I thought, never again. I can't bring her home anymore. 2 days later I went to the senior home to ADJUST mom, not real confident as to why. When I finished I offered to walk her as far as she could go. Picture me moving backward with a lady bend double doing the two step. Only this time, instead of being bent double, she was looking me in the face. She could not believe it. I could not believe it. The speech therapist could not believe it. The physical therapist came out of his office and said wow. A spark of hope was immediately apparent in her eyes. I hadn't seen that in a while. What did I do? ADJUST her. I did'nt give her nutrition counseling, or exercises, or a message. I ADJUSTED her. Time and again. It takes 45 minutes out of my day to make this happen.
The point of the story is pretty obvious but let me tell you what it has done for me. I absolutely know that what we do is ESSENTIAL for good health. It is not optional. I also know that no one is ever too far gone. Will she walk again? I doubt it. Will her suffering decrease? yes. Will her sense of self increase? again yes.
We spent a good part of this year trying to define what it is that we do with 4 simple questions. My mom, in her broken state, has provided real answers to all of them. Do not ever forget podlings, what you do and why it has such profound consequences. Take this story and be strengthened in this new year.
Blessings
ks