Today I will be mailing off my portfolio and application for board certification to the American Association of Integrative Medicine. While looking at the requirements for board certification, I realized that I am actually qualified to gain the next higher level -- Diplomate status. Having such a designation always looks good on a resume. It will be especially helpful while I am marketing my newest venture, that of being a mobile practitioner of integrative health services. The question that many people may have now is why I chose the subspecialty of integrative health care. Being a chiropractor, don't you just work in an office all day adjusting peoples' spines? Actually, as with any specialty, whether it be being a medical doctor, nurse, or attorney, a chiropractor can have different fields of specialty.
For people who have known me my whole life, it should be no great surprise that I am an integrative practitioner. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "integrate" as "to form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified whole." In this case, I am bringing together multiple disciplines to help a person with his or her health concerns. As a youngster growing up, my parents always took me to medical specialists to find out about my health problems, from a life-threatening food poisoning to chronic ear infections to stunted growth and development and finally being diagnosed with a heart condition that eventually needed open heart surgery to correct. It seemed to go on and on and on. I'm not sure if this is why I've always been fascinated with the science of studying the human body, but it certainly kept me interested. I used to spend hours diving into medical text books before I was eight years old, showing off a rather profound hyperlexia for my age. Even when I decided to pursue health care as a career, I saw that there were so many fields to choose from that I just didn't know which avenue to take.
As fate would have it, I happened upon deciding to make a career in health care after becoming a volunteer ambulance attendant. During those ten years, learning how to save lives and enjoying many great adventures, I spent one year in nursing school. Even though I was always at the top of the class in book work, I performed miserably in the clinical setting. In fact it wasn't until just last year that I finally was able to put my finger on the disability that always stunted my capacity to learn hands-on skills. Eventually I became a Respiratory Therapist, and then from there a chiropractor. Throughout the years of my life and my education, I have always been fascinated with various lab tests and what they mean, diagnosing illnesses, finding out how the human body actually works, and helping those who were suffering from various health woes. Even now as a chiropractor, I see how making use of these same diagnostic tools can help me to help people better their lives. Now as a chiropractor, I feel that I have more tools to work with than the average chiropractor AND the average medical practitioner. I am INTEGRATIVE in my approach.
As an integrative physician, I have knowledge from "both sides of the fence," so to speak: medicine and "alternative" medicine. As I explain myself in interviews, because I have knowledge of both, I know the abilities and limitations of both, and I know when and where I can cross the lines between the two when caring for a patient. In my office, I perform physical exams. I do D.O.T. physicals, pre-employment physicals, athletic physicals, routine physicals, neurological evaluations, and functional medicine lab tests. I will order X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, and even medical lab tests when I feel that they are necessary. Because I have knowledge from both sides of the fence, I know when a headache might be due to an upper neck misalignment and when it might be due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. I know when a bad case of enuresis might be due to a lumbar nerve compression or a urinary tract infection. To see things from the integrated view means that I can pool diagnostic and treatment options from medicine, alternative medicine, and of course chiropractic to help a person heal.
Looking back at the illnesses I suffered in my life, I can see what could have been helped by chiropractic when medicine failed, and I can also see when medicine was necessary to help what chiropractic would not have been able to help. Just to stick to one regimen is limiting. The person in need needs to open their mind to the various options and NOT feel hopeless just because the medical approach gave no results. It is just as limiting to rely only on natural methods, including chiropractic, for a particular problem when it is obvious that only medicine, or a life-saving operation, could help. Even the healthcare providers themselves, NEED to open their minds, and open their hearts, if they are TRULY to consider themselves HEALERS.
It's time for both sides to stop throwing stones. To the medical doctors: chiropractors are NOT "quacks," and your Committee Against Chiropractic (later renamed to Committee Against Quackery), which was formed by the American Medical Association in 1963, was your biggest mistake. Your concerted effort to destroy anything you couldn't own for yourselves was despicable, and it set back the healing possibilities of this nation hundreds of years. Likewise, to the chiropractors, I say this: YOUR blind following of super-straight philosophers leads you astray. I was horrified by the blasphemy I heard directed at me by teachers and fellow students at the best chiropractic college in the world because I needed to have medicine for certain conditions that I suffered from. Do not dare tell people that they do not need a certain medication until you have already helped them with your super-straight ideals. Even D.D. Palmer, the founder of our great profession, said in his book "The Chiropractor's Adjustor," "The good Doctor of Chiropractic will know what he can help and when he needs to refer to his medical counterpart."
Now let's integrate and get to work.
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