Why I Became A Chiropractor

Growing up, I had the greatest parents. They were at every school event, every sporting event, and every practice.

My mom always called herself my “number one fan.”

My mom is a special woman. She took care of everything around the house, worked out religiously, but my favorite thing she did was fix my hair every single night. I was a little girl with long blonde hair that showed up to school every day with a different hair style. I don't know how she did it, but I LOVED that she did. It was quality time I could count on each and every night. It made me feel loved, It made me feel special.

I know many of you think you had superwoman for a mom, but I am here to tell you: I had the real superwoman!

When my mother was 15 she sustained significant head and neck trauma as she was bucked off the back of her horse and landed hard, slamming her head into the ground. The next thing she knew she was waking up on her Father’s couch. Not knowing anything different, she didn’t seek any attention for the injury since it was “just a concussion” and there was nothing that could be done for her. The detrimental effects of a concussion is a whole other topic…..

Though she recovered quickly and didn’t seem to have any immediate effects from the accident, her neck became more and more of a problem as time passed. While, mind you, she was super woman, the pain she began to endure became far too great, even for a super hero. She began seeing a local chiropractor to address the issue. Each time she left the chiropractor she felt better for a little but it would always come back again. The cycle remained constant.

I remember the morning we were laying in bed together. I was a young child and like any other saturday morning, I would sneak off to their room and hang out with them in bed until they were ready to rise. This morning, however, was different from the others. This was the morning that I had to watch the strongest woman I know fall.

In trying to simply scoot up on her pillow, she experienced a life altering event. She dug her heels into the bed, pushed upward, and in what some would call a freak accident, she jarred her neck. She began experiencing excruciating, constant burning pain in her shoulder and arm that eventually led to muscle weakness. As days wore on, the pain turned to suffering. She couldn’t escape it. Her life became a patterned nightmare of pain, as she would wake up every morning and move to the couch where she would lay on her heating pad. She’d muster up the strength and energy long enough to take my brother and I to school, after which she would go back home and lay back on the couch until it was time to come get us from school. Her life went from supermom and wife to nothing.

She couldn’t take care of the house, couldn’t go to the store, she couldn’t even fix my hair. The hair of her own baby girl. Can you imagine what that would be like as a mother? Can you imagine what it was like as a child to watch your super hero suffer? Can you imagine being robbed of that time you valued so much with your mother? To watch her struggle to even get off the couch.

Eventually the desperation for change led to what many come to believe as their only chance for change; surgery. I still remember the day she went under the knife. Geez, It feels like it was yesterday. I get chills just talking about it.

I was eight years old. As I walked into my third grade classroom to take the biggest test of my life to that point, my mom was wheeled into surgery.

Nobody should ever have to live in that kind of fear. I wanted so much more for my mother and for myself. I wanted to be able to HELP her. From that day forward, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

But more importantly I knew the heartache I wanted to spare other families. Had my mother known there was something she could have done when she first had that accident, she never would have been in the situation she was in.