After a powerful healing experience with chiropractic at age fifteen, Samantha Wark was finally able to decide between a career in chiropractic and a future in law. “If I can help one person and give someone answers, my life would have fulfillment,” she says. “I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
After considering careers in medicine, dentistry, and wildlife management, Chris Zuccato finished undergrad without a good idea of what he really wanted to do. It wasn’t until his wife introduced him to a chiropractor that he found his fit. “The idea that the body is designed to take care of itself was a concept that I always believed but had never been able to articulate,” he says. Chris knew right away he had finally found a career that would be fulfilling and help him take care of his family.
A mother, teacher, wife and “non-traditional” student, Diane Schroeder says she fell in love with chiropractic the moment she heard a Sherman student speak about it. A former Montessori preschool teacher, Diane says, “I am truly fulfilling my dream now.” Her son attends Sherman with her.
Ready to pursue graduate school for physical therapy, sports enthusiast Brian Leary attended a career fair and met an admission rep from Sherman College. He quickly applied, was accepted and moved to South Carolina – and he hasn’t looked back since. “I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to become a chiropractor,” he says.
Married with two young children and working in the family chiropractic office as a massage therapist, Melinda Hallam realized she still had more than 30 years of work ahead of her, and she wanted to do something she was passionate about. So she put her fears aside and enrolled at Sherman College. When she graduates, she’ll join her father and uncle as a doctor of chiropractic.
Growing up in the chiropractic lifestyle, Ryan Burkhart was inspired by science and health as a sophomore in high school and decided then that he would follow his father’s footsteps and enroll at Sherman. “I saw Sherman as the place to think of both the why and the how of chiropractic,” he explains.
Cincinnati girl Monica Friske was always a little different: she drove a big truck, listened to country music, rode horses and went to a chiropractor regularly. After seeing a horse get adjusted, she decided to switch career paths from veterinarian to chiropractor and hasn’t looked back. “Sherman instantly became my home,” she says.
Owning my own home I have a whole new appreciation for spring cleaning. As a child I really never had to participate in Spring Cleaning. I think mom always sent us away to summer camp so she could clean without so much help. I make it though the basic cleaning dishes, laundry, bathrooms on the weekends in between giving my family attention and studying, but tasks like cleaning out the random things that spill in the refrigerator or scrubbing grout lines on the bathroom floor are left for spring cleaning.
Why do I share such random information? Because even though scrubbing grout lines is not cool in the least bit the gadget makes me laugh. When I was a kid we used old toothbrushes and elbow grease to get the job done. But in the age of innovation the power toothbrush was created for our teeth. Now we have the Rubbermaid Reveal Power Scrubber for our grout line. I was a marketing major in undergrad, so anytime I see a new product I am curious about the back store. How did this product come into existence? I bet someone tried to use their power toothbrush and thought if I make the head a little larger and the bristles a little tougher I can change $19.99 for a new product. Hats off to you Rubbermaid for manufacturing and marketing a power toothbrush to make grout cleaning easier!
The Wikipedia page for Chiropractic is ridiculous. The page
is as divided on the identity and practices of a chiropractor as the profession
itself. If the website was my only exposure to chiropractic care, I would be
very skeptical of the profession. I can totally understand why a single
negative remark from a PCP would be enough to discourage seeing a chiropractor.
I am not sure if that is by design or not. In addition, the citations are
almost as long as the information of the web page. Internal medicine on the
other hand has a beautifully crafted mission statement and an easily understood
webpage on Wikipedia. The MD description is also much shorter than our page and
goes through no controversial history.
The page for alternative medicine (which is the current
classification for chiropractic care) even includes this quote from Richard
Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist: alternative medicine is a "set of
practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail
tests."He has also stated that "there is no alternative
medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't
work."He has argued that, if a technique is demonstrated
effective in properly performed trials, it ceases to be alternative and simply
becomes medicine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
So in the mind of a very influential researcher, I am not
doing medicine. I am doing something that refuses to be tested. I find this
very frustrating. Unfortunately, the controversy doesn’t end there. I talk to
friends that are very skeptical of the profession as well. I talked yesterday
to an undergraduate student doing research over the summer at Calvin College. This
student stated, “It is arguable if ‘chiropractic’ is a doctor.”
I find these inconsistencies with the legitimacy of the
Chiropractic profession frightening and disconcerting. I can’t think of many
professions that the public blatantly denies the validity of their degree. This
is an issue that will not go away overnight. It must be something that
chiropractors are more vigilant about addressing in the future. As a
profession, there must be a mandate to educate their communities on the beauty
of the human body and how Chiropractic care fits into the maintenance of health.
There is no place like home. And nothing feels longer than the trip between Spartanburg, SC and Grand Rapids, MI. To make things more interesting, I stopped in Sevierville, Tennessee to drop off fellow blogger, Melinda Hallam. I spent the night there and continued on to Illinois to visit my brother at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He rolled out the red carpet as best he could by showing me his research lab and let me hear the depressing stories of failed research ideas of all of his fellow lab mates. (There is nothing more depressing than organic synthesis). Then the next day, I powered through the rest of way home in time for a very relaxing bonfire.
Hanging out at the lake with Melinda and her family.
When I travel home, I always want to stop at Rarity, TN. It just looks so inviting.
My first time in Louisville
Look at that traffic heading into Louisville
Now it is my turn to get stuck in traffic.
Southern Illinois driving
4 hrs of Southern Illinois driving
The Graduate Student hard at work
Entering Inidana near the tristate area. Only 3 more hours and I am home.
Finals start next week (June 11-14). That is the reason I decided to
forgo the studying for a few more hours and take part in Chiro Fellowship Night
at Dr. Chris Kersko’s house. I was invited by Wendy Parker and I am glad that
she went out of her way to do so.
It was a potluck dinner with pulled pork, salad, chips, and
pie for dessert. It was a great time to talk and visit with the 15+ students
that showed up. It was a mix from 14th to 2nd quarter.
After eating Dr. Mike Geran, a local Sherman alumnus that
practices in Greenville, demonstrated lumbar sets ups on different students.
Everyone had a chance to feel and assess the restriction in the low back and SI
joint. This was a great opportunity to get my head out of the books and look at
real life applications of the material set forth in the Sherman curriculum.
I hope that others are able to get involved with Chiro
Fellowship Night in the future. The next upcoming event features Dr. Reizer and
the following is President Cordero. It is a great opportunity that Dr. Kersko
has graciously set up to benefit students of all quarters. I would recommend
everyone check it out next month. Just be sure to bring a side dish and an open
mind to learn.
06/07/2013
It is not often that I take my head out of the books are go exploring the local community. On this particular day I was taking Ryan (fellow Sherman blogger) to the airport so I convinced Rachel and Christian to go early and eat in Greenville. I am sure many of you have heard the expression the best kept secret of the south. I would apply this to Greenville.
If you have never been to downtown Greenville the main street is filled with restaurants, cute boutiques, and pubs (sorry my husband is British I can’t call them bars). But the best kept secret is Falls Park. I had been to the main street before, but I had never walked all the way to the end. If you walk past Carolina Ale House and keep going eventually you run into the park. I love the architecture of the bridge and the cascading waterfall is beautiful.
We had appetizers and a pint at the Green Room. (I did not know until after we left, but the Green Room was featured on TV for their French fries.) We had dinner at California Dreaming where I highly recommend the marinated chicken. And ice cream at Spill the Beans. Not in that order. I love trying new places and managed to go to 3 new places in one day. I think I will need about 10 more trips to try every restaurant on Main Street.
I watched this old Reggie Gold video on YouTube. Despite
being filmed long before I was born, I think this held some good insight into
subluxation and the grind of old time medical doctors. This is an interview
between Dr. Terry Rondberg, DC, Dr. Jerome Williams, MD, Dr. Reggie Gold, DC,
and Dr. John Grant, physician.
Reggie Gold did a great job of
defending the chiropractic philosophy in this interview. When this interview
was originally taken, the relationship between medicine and chiropractic was
clearly still tense from attempts by the AMA to degrade the credibility of DCs.
Dr. Rondberg and Dr. Gold both had a united front on the purpose and abilities
of chiropractic. It is for the “restoration and maintenance of health (Dr.
Rondburg).” It is about the alignment of a vertebra compared to the above and
below segment. The consequent compression and damage of misalignment leads to
malfunction of organs at end of the nerve fibers. This ideal stems from the view
of the whole body suffering from the presence of a subluxation regardless of
the symptoms. This is similar to bad nutrition causing a lack of resilience of
the body rather than specific disease (Dr. Gold).
The first half of the interview
seemed to be focused on getting the DCs to admit they in some way treated
symptomatology. The moderator was continually attempting to get Dr. Gold to say
that since a patient may seek chiropractic care to help with asthma (a
diagnosis) must mean a DC is treating the disease. It seems to be the
vitalistic worldview that medicine and moderator don’t like or cannot
comprehend. Reggie maintains that the DC is content to address the damaging
effects of the subluxation as an entity of itself instead of diagnosis. This elicits
an “agree to disagree remark” from the MDs.
Meanwhile, Dr. Grant clearly
explains the goal of medicine is to treat what seems appropriate for the
individual parts of the body (disease). Both MDs agree with the major premise
that nerve damage is bad when it causes symptoms while holding that the
practice of chiropractic is based on faith and not science. Dr. Williams even
claims there is no doubt in its lack of scientific validity. He says “there is
no doubt” about as may times as Dr. Gold states he would like to finish
answering the question. Dr. Gold correctly points out that faith isn’t a good
explanation for the positive outcomes of chiropractic care since most patients
use it as a last resort (which implies the least amount of faith) and its
outstanding results on animals (which lack a beliefs system).
I respect Dr. Grant for properly
identifying that there is a force that heals the body. He stated, “…some
[patients get better] from what we do, sometimes by faith in us and sometimes
because the body has a way of healing itself.” He also agrees that medicine is
limited in its ability to offer permanent, long lasting cures to diseases
beyond symptom removal. Conversely, Dr. Williams was unreceptive to the
possibilities of chiropractic. One of his first remarks stated that he knew
very little about chiropractic care, but had already concluded from simple
research it is ineffective. This man I found to be smug and a borderline
annoyance.
It was interesting to see this discussion forum that took
place long before I was born to learn from the leaders in healthcare from that
time. The debate on the validity of chiropractic is still seen today so this
topic is still very relevant. It is up to the each doctor to weigh their own
personal philosophy and hone their healing art, but there is clearly something
involved in the power of the chiropractic adjustment. Dr. Rondberg and Dr. Gold
could see it clearly. Hopefully I can do my part in advancing this profession
we call chiropractic.
I always preface my order with “I know this is an odd request, but may I have 2 waffle cones with no ice cream.” Everywhere I go I get a different response when I ask this question. Some people just give me the cone and say no charge, others look around for a manager and ask “can we sell just the cone,” and sometimes I have to pay the same price as if I had the ice cream. To some of you this is an odd request, but I try to limit the amount of sugar my children consume.
My girls are 4 and 2 and have never had ice cream, soda, or chocolate. Don’t get me wrong it can be hard to keep these things away when they are at daycare, but with a little effort and collaboration it works. On days when they have parties at school I will make oatmeal raisin cookies with apple sauce and a little brown sugar. My mom always comes up with creative ways to cut fruit and vegetables to make them fun. People always ask do you eat ice cream in front of them. Yes (maybe I would be healthier if I was as strict on myself as I am my kids) I just tell them it is a Mommy/Daddy treat, and when they are as old as us they can have ice cream too.
Why am I writing this post? 2 reasons: To let people know you can raise your kids with less junk food. And also if you see my daughters eating cones please do not ask them what happened to their ice cream. (like the nice lady did this past week) Nothing happened to it. It was never there to begin with.
My vision of chiropractic includes every infant, child, adult and senior in the world being checked for Vertebral Subluxation and then if found, adjusted by a CHIROPRAC-TOR.
My vision of Chiropractic places the profession in a place of honor and distinction because of its’ unique service to all of humanity. What is your vision?
I went to a Brenau University Women’s College for my undergraduate degree. It is a small liberal arts college located in Gainesville, GA about an hour northeast of Atlanta. One of the things I loved about Brenau was its history and deep rooted traditions. We would have convocation at least 5 times a year were the faculty put on their robes and processed into the auditorium. This past weekend as I watched the faculty of Sherman College process in for Dr. Cordero’s investiture I was taken back in time to my undergraduate days.
The definition of Investiture is the act or formal ceremony of conferring the authority and symbols of a high office. While the intent is for the ceremony to be formal, you could feel the excitement in the crowd, especially from the Cordero Family members that can all the way from Puerto Rico. Welcome speeches were made by several people representing organization within the chiropractic community. Dr. Cordero’s son sang a song. Dr. Kavorkian preformed the investiture. Then Dr. Cordero gave a short speech. I am grateful to be a part of such as auspicious occasion. I talked with one doctor and I am sure there were several other doctors that flew in just for the night. Just to be a part of this one event! To me that is mind blowing.
If the support surrounding Dr. Cordero is any indication of the type of leadership that he will bring to Sherman College then I look forward with anticipation to my next 3 years. To any prospective students who attended Lyceum or career day I hope being on campus was enough to get you excited about starting your chiropractic career at Sherman, but if you are still thinking let me give you my advice. You are here for a reason period. To any prospective student that was unable to attend this past weekend, come check us out!
I was thinking about what the most pressing issue was for American society in the next twenty years. My essay called the Unexpected Crisis is what followed.
The Unexpected Crisis
Developed countries are facing an
unexpected crisis today. It is the rise of obesity, hypertension, cancer, and
many other chronic diseases. While many children on this earth are struggling
to find shelter, fresh water, and food; thirty-three percent of American boys
and thirty percent of American girls are estimated to be overweight or obese (Go
AS). It is also estimated that over 1.6 million new cases of cancer will occur
during the course of 2013 in America alone (Rick Alteri). These statistics are disconcerting
since we have seen an astounding number of medical advancements over the last
50 years. Yet, the health of our society
continues to decrease. I believe that
our society is becoming an unhealthy nation despite all of our medical
advancements due to poor lifestyle choices.
The ambiguity of how to live a
healthy lifestyle is a major factor in the inability of so many to live such a
lifestyle. This stems from the individualized and abstract nature of health. An
individual may use words such as strong, vigorous, energetic, and/or mentally
clear to subjectively describe how they feel when healthy. Conversely, antonyms
of these words such as sluggish, under the weather, weak, achy, pain, and a
loss of vigor are used when someone isn’t feeling well. So, what does a person
do if they are experiencing no pain or ailment, but still feel unhealthy? I believe most physicians would be at a loss
as to how to treat the patient and would refer them to another physician that
specializes in alternative and complementary care. This is because most general
practitioners create a diagnosis from a list of aches and pains rather than
focusing on global health.
Global health is a broad subject
and very hard to define since it requires an examination of more than just our
physical health. One can be free from
ailment and still be unhealthy. For instance, if someone has a BMI of 30, they
are obese by that index measure. I personally am at a BMI of 30, but I would
describe myself as free from aliment. Does that make me healthy? Of course not;
I could certainly do more to improve my health by changing my lifestyle to make
it more sustainable as I age. Additionally, I believe health involves more than
just the body and mind. A person can be mentally sound, but emotionally unhappy
due to life’s circumstances. Over time, this may increase the risk of disease
or psychosis. I also believe there is a spiritual or metaphysical piece of
health which is often ignored since it cannot be treated by traditional means.
