Just A Very Short Note

This note is for all those people who are afraid that I and my wife would ever consider leaving Minnesota: Even if I WOULD find a substantial opportunity to be professionally successful elsewhere in the U.S., it would have to be so substantial that I could afford to commute during break times back HERE to my home in Minnesota. I'm only considering one such opportunity at this moment in time, a clinic faculty doctor position at my chiropractic alma mater in Marietta, GA. We love living here, ESPECIALLY because of events that occurred within the past couple months that showed us how very special the people that we know here are and how great it really is to be a Minnesotan. I guess we can call ourselves "Minnesotans" now since we've been living here for more than seven years now!

A New Angle On "Success"

In my last entry I mentioned a doctor by the name of Tom Necela. He contacted me, and we are now LinkedIn comrades. It is interesting how the internet definitely does bring people together in the strangest ways! After all, the internet is how I met my wife Bianca.

Bianca and I had a conversation just two days ago that was inspired by a friend of ours, Todd Chowan. It was about how one should measure how successful they are in life. This was based on a series of events that happened just two weeks ago on October 14th - 15th. I had been feeling particularly disappointed and discouraged by the fact that my practice is so incredibly small that it only gives me pocket change. Bianca and I bought a house last summer. We have plans to upgrade the house and to start a family. Although she makes a very good salary as a school teacher, I have contributed very little monetarily to our picture of success.

But, taking money OUT of the picture, it is apparent that I am perhaps one of the most successful people I know! I have succeeded at one of my childhood goals of becoming a doctor with great knowledge of how the body works and can help people improve their health and well-being in holistic ways. The 18 years of being involved in health care BEFORE becoming a doctor were but a primer, a preparatory challenge, that lead me to become a great healer. Having my own health challenges ever since infancy has built my own ability to empathize with people and know what it feels like to be sick, hospitalized, incapacitated,and left wondering if they are going to live to see tomorrow. I now have a wonderful wife and a wonderful hone. That is certainly a success! In my favorite hobby of playing Scrabble, I am ranked among some of the best players in the country. I am sure that I can come up with other ways in which my life was successful to this point.

But this is not the way I was thinking on October 14th. I was feeling quite dismayed, even as Bianca and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. As on any usual day, Bianca went to bed before I did. I continued my nightowl routines. I suddenly felt very tired at about 2 AM October 15th, which was still a bit early for me to go to bed. I also had a headache. I thought nothing of it because I occasionally do get headaches on days when I abstained from caffeine.

When I woke up at 7:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom, I noticed I couldn't get out of bed. I could barely move my right leg, and I had no strength to balance on it. At the same time, Bianca had asked me to set the alarm for her. As I picked up my right arm, I noticed I couldn't move my hand and coordinate my fingers in any sensible way. I made it to the bathroom and back by holding onto the wall. Bianca was very worried and wanted to call the ambulance. I was stubborn and I said "no" with a slurred and muffled voice, but then said okay. The ambulance came and rushed me to the hospital were a CAT scan revealed that I was having a stroke.

Since I take coumadin anticoagulant for a prosthetic heart valve, they gave me the drugs Vitamin K and Factor 9 to stop the bleeding in my brain. I then spent the next four days in ICU. Then, after spending just one day on the regular hospital floor I was transferred to a rehab hospital where I spent three days. So I was in the hospital for a whole week. During that time, I regained full use of my leg and I can now walk normally. I still do not have full use of my right hand. I can type adequately and eat, but I cannot write very well at all. I also lost some of my voice. I will now be going through outpatient rehab therapy for my right hand and my voice.

Because of this experience, I can truly say that I am connected to a very caring community of friends and people from the school district where Bianca teaches. Thanks to connecting with them through the Caring Bridge website, we now have meal support and ride support to my appointments. It is also uplifting to know that my parents will be visiting from the East Coast next week. It is always good to have family around during a crisis situation. My parents had ALWAYS been there for all of my life health crises. Now that they are in their 70s, this visit is so much more special. Heck, I am the one who is supposed to be looking after THEM!

I can't say for sure if the stroke was brought on by the negative, sulking frame of mind I had the day prior. But I CAN INDEED say that a negative frame of mind DOES lead to illness and continued illness. During all the years I have been in healthcare as a care giver, I can truly say that the sickest people I've ever seen, on a whole, are the ones who do not have a positive frame of mind. The feel as though their whole life has been a failure, and they also lack a support system to give them happiness and encouragement.

Having a feeling, and a genuine notion, of belonging and success in life are PARAMOUNT to good health. Even the psycholgist Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, pointed this out in 1943. In 1895, Dr. Daniel D. Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, pointed out that 80% of all illness in life is due to one's mental state of being. This was a big personal lesson for me! And from now on I will count my blessings and my successes instead of measuring myself based on a monetary income. I am quite abundant in the amount of help I can give others. But if they do not want what I have to offer,that doesn't mean I am not successful!

The Integrative Approach To Health Care

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.

Spinal Hygiene

When I mention the words "spinal" and "hygiene" together, I usually get a good chuckle. Hygiene commonly refers to the act of cleanliness, such as brushing your teeth properly or washing your hands often. In reality, the true meaning of the word "hygiene", according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "Conditions or practices conducive to health." Therefore, these two words fit together perfectly. Here's a question to ponder: If the brain controls everything in the body, how do the signals get from the brain to the body and back again? It's not a trick answer. The answer is: the spinal cord. All of the nerves that run through the spine, and the 24 cranial nerves, control EEEVEERRYYYTHING in the body. Therefore, it's vital to maintaining optimal health and function to be very aware of proper spinal hygiene.

The first an absolutest rule to proper spinal hygiene is: get a chiropractor. When bones misalign, they can and do put pressure on nerves. When nerves have pressure placed on them, things start to go bad, and it doesn't always cause pain. Chiropractic care takes the pressure off the nerves. You can never reach your true potential in life without chiropractic care! Secondly, the rest is up to you. Do what you can when you're not in your chiropractor's office to keep yourself healthy. This includes setting up your work areas to reduce physical stress. This is referred to as "ergonomics." This also includes de-stressing yourself mentally and emotionally on a regular basis. Dr. Daniel David Palmer, the founder of the chiropractic profession, said that 80% of all illness is due to "autosuggestion", or how we think. Spiritual health is also very important. I'm not talking about the need to go to church or practice a certain belief. Being "spiritual" simply means doing what is right and keeping in mind that there is a bigger picture and a Divine Order to the universe.

In my stress reduction workshops, I teach people a series of physical stretches that specifically focus on spine tuning as part of a complete spinal hygiene package. These exercises were developed in 1999 by Dr. Ron Kirk, dean of the chiropractic program at Life University in Marietta, GA. These exercises are so simple that anyone of any age can do them, even if they have some sort of back problem. You can see the instructional program on how to do these exercises here: http://www.life.edu/node/868. In followup sessions, people have told me that when they do these exercises, they find that they have better endurance throughout the day, whether they are working at a desk job or whether they are an athlete in training. I encourage everyone to look through this spinal hygiene and spine tuning program. It just might make the difference in how healthy you feel and in how well you function!

If you don't already have a chiropractor, and you don't know who in your area to choose, you can always contact me. I will check around to see who in your area I feel will be able to serve you best based on your particular needs. Not every chiropractor is the same, meaning that some have different subspecialties. For example, not every chiropractor is trained in pediatric care or in the care of extremity problems. You can contact me through my NEW website at www.mihsUSA.com.

A New Format

Since I've hardly used this blog, and when I did it was either a for a rant or a good story to tell, I figure I will use it as an educational tool. I am completely revamping my business, my websites, my resume, and now my blog. I still have yet to figure out how to incorporate the Blogspot site into other sites, like you can with WordPress. I'm becoming more in tune with these things, thanks to some help I am getting these days from fellow business professionals. One reason why I haven't been very successful in business is because I always tried to go it alone. Those days are over. Networking with likeminded people is crucial in this day and age. I once complained that it's because people do not like my autistic mannerisms. BUT, that is something people don't even find out about until they've walked through my door. Getting people to do THAT much is the trick!

So, in the days to come this blog will be used to give little health and wellness tips. Nothing fancy, nothing controversial. My newest venture is to get out of the office more and onto the road. The Sufletesc Center has become Mobile Integrated Health Solutions. Mobile does not mean that I am going back to doing house calls. Doing that is how I ended up with chronic pain in my shoulder, which has since healed up nicely. It does mean that I will make business-to-business "house calls" to places like trucking companies, private offices, community events, etc. "Integrated" means that I not only offer chiropractic care, but I also do D.O.T. physicals, employee health screening, employment & athletic physicals, and functional medicine services, just like I always have. This is the new deal. For the time being, I will be serving all of Minnesota from Duluth to Fergus Falls to Worthington onward to the southeast.

For more information about what I've been up to lately, you can see my NEW website at http://www.mihsUSA.com . Or, you can follow me as I take the show on the road on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-Louis-Park-MN/Mobile-Integrated-Health-Solutions/126862493842?ref=ts . There's more to come!

The Next Chapter

It's been more than a month since I last wrote. My writing habit comes and goes. For a while I have a ton of stuff running through my head. Then I go into that "empty box" where my head just doesn't feel like thinking of anything. Since I last wrote, I hopped back on the "what am I really supposed to be doing with myself" wagon. Thanks to that autistic tendency to want to try to fit in with different groups of people to see where you can fit in, I ended up losing my job as a security guard at the theater here in Minneapolis. People complained because I said things, rather I wrote things on their Facebook page, that made them feel uncomfortable. My explanation was that being autistic makes it hard for people to draw the boundary lines between what should be said when and to whom. This much is really true. But the fact that they fired me for it and merely relocated another guard to another position led me to file a charge of discrimination with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. I'm not even going to follow up on it, really. Whatever happens happens, and in the meantime I have moved on.

While being a "healer" always ends up being the answer to what I was really meant to do in life, building a clientele continues to be my weakest point. I can help a three-month old overcome colic when everything else failed, I can help a family member overcome vertigo when a medical doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong, I can uncover deeply-rooted emotional hangups that keep a person sick thanks to medical intuition, but I can't build a practice. Go figure. Just last night I figured that I really shouldn't be surprised. After all, not knowing how to correspond appropriately and with the right people has ALWAYS been my downfall. It still continues to be my downfall. But just like Dr. Temple Grandin, if not for the people who knew of her gift and stuck up for her, she probably would have succumbed to the same lack of social propriety.

On that note, I recently decided to make lemonade out of lemons. I designed a class specifically on living with autism spectrum disorders -- a class about ASDs taught by an audie. What a concept! I advertised it to several local community education programs, 117 of them to be exact. So far, I have about six of them that I scheduled this class with for their upcoming Fall community ed programs. I am also taking this opportunity to seek out the advice of a psychologist who may be able to give me some practical advice. The one who has experience working with audies was all booked up (surprise surprise). So the one I will have an appointment with this coming Wednesday specializes in anxiety disorders and depression. I can't say I have any issues there, but at least it was something that stood out as different from the rest of the people on my insurance provider list. The difference is that I know where to start -- I am a person with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I didn't know that just 13 months ago.

I guess there really is no "next chapter". I am just revisiting the previous one, but now knowing what my shortcoming is. And it's something I'll have to deal with and make known to potential employers. I have gone back to trying to promote myself through making phone calls and proposals for providing chiropractic and examination services. I even list in my most current brochure that I myself live with an ASD. I pretty much had to do that in hopes of cutting down on the amount of strange looks I get if and when people visit my office and see somebody they judge as not being "doctor-like". I have to make do with what is and forget about what isn't. Another thing I am looking into is what possibility there might be that I can get some kind of disability compensation. Sure I can work. But functioning is a different story. Functioning as a "neurotypical" may always be an impossibility. It would be nice if there was somebody who could walk in front of me whenever I am going to make a presentation or reach out to a new contact and say, "Here is a physician who can help you, as long as you overlook the fact that he may act differently because he is autistic."

Audies DO live in a world of their own. It is up to the neurotypical to learn how to coexist with them and communicate with them in a meaningful, functional, non-judgmental, progressive way.

A New Venue

A light bulb went on in my head just a couple days ago. I started putting together some of the pieces of the puzzle of my life in a more meaningful way. First, I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I do not have the ability to get out there and promote myself and be present during the daytime hours. Second, thanks to the early days of this CFS problem when I was pretty much houseridden, I became hooked to the internet. I still spend quite a bit of time online, just not in chatrooms anymore. Yes, I have my doctorate degree, which I've felt is going to waste for quite some time because I have not been successful in business. So, how can I get myself out there AND make money at the same time. All this time I've been focusing on creating my websites, tweaking them, making up brochures and ads, all to promote myself. In the past year or less, I started answering questions in different health forums, and I found that I really enjoy that very much. So, finally, it dawned on me what I should do.

The question came to me, "How can I answer people's health related questions online AND get paid for it?" I'm actually quite surprised that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The answer is -- by creating a virtual office. That is what I am in the process of doing now. I found a website where people can call in or write to experts in different categories. If they approve of my credentials and profiles, then away we go. If they do not, then I'll create my own forum on the website that I already have, and I'll advertise it all over the place. All you have to do is click a button and you have me in a chatroom, live and at your service. I already know what I will be charging, and I already have about a year of experience doing this online. Now let's see what happens. It WILL be up and running soon. It's just a matter of how many people I can attract. I figure I can't be invisible forever. Yes, I am here to serve, as a physician, as a healer, as a shoulder to lean on for people who are in need. This IS my calling.

Recently my wife and I saw the movie "The Proposal". Although a very funny movie indeed, there was one somber moment where a question of mine was answered out of the blue. Because of my floundering business success, I had been asking myself lately what it is I was REALLY meant to do. I figured that I wasn't being very successful because I wasn't doing the right thing. Then Betty White answered my question in the movie with this line: "Whatever you do, that's what you'll be." Now it's no mystery to me. I'll keep being what I always was -- a healing practitioner. Let's see how this new venue works out.