The Doctor Is In: An Audie Journey

Last night I attended the Richfield city council meeting. Ten of us were present to promote a new city ordinance whereby tobacco usage in city parks would be banned. In attendance were four of us from the city’s Advisory Board of Health and two medical doctors who were administrators of HealthPartners. When they passed around a sheet so that we could sign in, the two doctors from HealthPartners signed their names as “Doctor -----“, with the word “doctor” spelled out. Without batting an eye, I did the same. I just never saw that done before, which is what surprised me. In the end, the new ordinance passed, and it will go into effect on January 1, 2011. Tonight’s event put the icing on a day-long contemplation about how and, more importantly, WHY I became a doctor. Also, how and why I became a CHIROPRACTOR. I will share this contemplation with you, which is the most truthful description of the journey there is.

Doctors and health professionals of all kinds have always surrounded me throughout my childhood years. I was either constantly ill with ear infections and other illnesses or being evaluated for my neurological sluggishness, stunted growth, and heart problems. Another interesting point is that I witnessed a lot of tragedies in my lifetime where the emergency responses stuck in my head – Hurricane Agnes, numerous severe fires during the 60s and 70s, numerous severe accidents at the intersection just 200 feet from the house I grew up in. All of this exposure was fascinating. While I could probably make a strong case that all of this influenced my choice to make a career in health care, the truth is that none of this was the primary motivator.

Back in these childhood years, I knew that I was different. I knew that I was a social recluse. I knew that I had very different interests and very different ways of looking at things. I was so different that I didn’t dare try to be social with people my own age. It’s not that I was afraid to. It was just that I didn’t know how to. I derived my greatest joy from receiving compliments from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and neighbors who were all astonished by this hyperlexic, awkward runt. Reading Gray’s Anatomy, textbooks on astronomy, and researching paranormal phenomena in the adult section of the Reading Public Library was my favorite pastime when I was only nine years old. I had no social life per se. Therefore, I also felt as though I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt that I had nothing to offer, and all of my interests really wouldn’t take me anywhere in life.

During this time in my life I did have a couple friends that I hung around with. One was the boy next door. The other was a kid named Michael. Michael’s dad and uncle were members of the local fire department. Michael would always talk about really neat emergencies that his dad and uncle were at. When Michael and I were seventeen years old, Michael joined the local fire and rescue explorers post, where people our age could receive basic training in firefighting and rescue techniques. While all of this sounded fascinating, the fascination itself was not the motivator that finally led me in this path. It all boiled down to one thing: if I was ever to be looked at as somebody who could make a difference to other people, I needed to be able to help them during their greatest time of need. Otherwise, I would just be this socially isolated, strange kid without a purpose. THAT was the motivator. And the more I learned over the years, the more potential I discovered within myself.

My social awkwardness did prevent me from becoming “liked”. Whether I was a member of the fire department, working for an ambulance service, or working in a hospital somewhere, I was always that hyperlexic, awkward runt. It’s just that now I had a tendency to bring out the worst in others since I was easy to pick on. But I kept going in what I did because I enjoyed it so much. Also, what I was doing in the health care field did make a difference to me. I really was helping people during their greatest times of need. I finally had a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

My early years of health care were spent in emergency care. I enjoyed the thrills of being a firefighter (until my heart condition prevented me from being able to be a firefighter any longer), an ambulance attendant, and a nurse aid. Eventually I became a Respiratory Therapist. At no point during these early years did I consider going to medical school. I was enjoying the adrenalin rushes more than anything else. Being there in life-and-death situations was where I belonged. This is where I could make that difference in people’s lives. As a result, though, I didn’t focus so much on academics. Even though I was college educated, GPAs and class rankings had no importance to me. A year after graduating from the first-ever Respiratory Care class at Reading Area Community College, I finally saw the potential in me to become – a DOCTOR.

Now working at the Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana, I saw a brighter future ahead, a clear vision of moving up the ladder even further. But because of my floundering past academia, I knew that it would be near impossible to get into medical school. This was further quashed by a conversation I had with the dean of the medical school at Indiana University in Gary, Indiana. As he slammed a rubber ball onto his desk, he said to me, “It aggravates the hell out of me to see these nurses and therapists who think that they can do a doctor’s job better than the doctor, and this becomes the reason why they want to go to medical school.” My only thought was, “What a jerk!” I knew that there were many other options to become a physician within the world of health care. So I did some research into various schools and programs, and I did some meditating.

One place I loved visiting after I got done working at the hospital at 11:00 at night was the Indiana Dunes State Park. It was so soothing and inspirational to walk in the sand, looking out over Lake Michigan in the still of the night. While standing there on the beach one night in August of 1993, the water just touching my feet, I meditated on what the right path to follow would be. I imaged myself as a doctor of various professions – dentist, podiatrist, osteopath, etc. The one that felt absolutely right for me was being a chiropractor. The rest was history. After looking into all the chiropractic schools in the U.S., the school I chose was undoubtedly the best one for me: Life University in Marietta, GA. Whereby many schools placed too much emphasis on medical didactics, I figured that if I was going to study chiropractic, I wanted to learn chiropractIC. Life University teaches more hands-on techniques and more anatomy and physiology courses than any other chiropractic school. But being part of the largest chiropractic school in the world at the time would prove to be a social challenge in itself.

I found the academics to be very interesting. My GPA soared to above 3.5 effortlessly. Just six months into the program, on April 11, 1995, I began a 15-1/2 year battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The GPA fell and attendance suffered. But I plugged away and made it through. Along the way, the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome would not be my only health challenge. But what was even more of a factor in how I did was the fact that I was still a socially awkward recluse. Now, spending more time with peers, I appeared to be even more awkward and naïve. While it takes most people four years to complete this graduate school program, it took me five and a half years. While part of that was due to my health problems, most of it was due to my social incapacities. Student interns must scrounge for their own patients to care for during their internship. Making meaningful contact with people would prove to be my greatest weakness, as it always had been throughout my life. I made it through, nonetheless.

I’ve been in practice now for 10-1/2 years. Looking back at all I have done throughout the years, I can truly say that I accomplished my #1 goal: I became somebody who could help people during their greatest times of need, health-wise. And yes, this does give me a great feeling, to be able to rise above the perpetual social awkwardness. We know now that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, which explains everything regarding my lifelong social struggles. I feel better knowing this. But because the social awkwardness is still there, the attempts at building a practice over the years produced mere drops in the bucket. Now I turn my primary goal toward accomplishing another great feat: finding a way to be successful at what I do or at anything whereby I can financially sustain my household and my family. All along I thought that everything would just fall into place just by being what I am professionally. It has not. The doctor is in, but nobody notices.