Article by: Dr. Matthew Norton
Early this summer my wife and I attended a social gathering with the families of some women she regularly prays with. I was engaged in casual conversation with one of the husbands when he asked about my work. I will call him Bill to maintain his anonymity. I told him that I was a chiropractic doctor with a focus upon helping people struggling with pain or illness and those not performing at their peak.
Bill then shared about the constant left hip pain he had been suffering for three years. It never let up and at times was nearly unbearable. It interfered with his sleep, his ability to exercise and many other aspects of his daily routine.
Bill is only 48 years old. He told me that he had experienced a significant bike accident 26 years earlier and didn't know if there was a connection.
He had been evaluated by his medical doctor at regular intervals over the three year period and was informed that he had arthritis. During this entire time he was daily taking medications which were the only recommendation other than eventual hip replacement surgery. He reported no relief but continued to take them given no other options.
Three years had passed while Bill struggled with this severe pain and its restrictions to his quality of life. He had stopped his search for a truly corrective solution.
Bill was stuck and tolerating his predicament.
What are you tolerating? What pains are you putting up with or attempting to keep at bay with symptom-suppressing drugs at the expense of your liver and kidneys? What deficits of function have you simply accepted as your "bad" body parts? How has this pain or its life restrictions impacted your thoughts and emotions?
Are you frequently irritable, short-tempered, anxious or depressed? Have you started to give up ever returning to your better self and written your condition off as advancement into old age?
Have you stopped some of the life activities that have brought joy and value to your life? Are you playing life smaller and safer as a result?
How have these restrictions and the lost satisfaction affected your close relationships? Are you less pleasant to be with?
Toleration means to put up with or endure. Life is too special and your contribution too important to be enduring a health compromise. It is still possible for you to be set free by a true solution so don't stop seeking.
Bill decided that he had nothing to lose by coming to my office for an evaluation of his spine and nervous system function. He is a logical thinker and the idea made sense to him when we reasoned it through.
I found significant structural alignment problems with his spine and some degenerative decay due to its longstanding nature. His nervous system also demonstrated major irritation that was interfering with normal function. Bill decided to pursue a brief program of corrective care.
Condition correction is a process and its time frame is uniquely individual. However, occasionally the seemingly miraculous occurs in symptom improvement. Bill returned the day after he received his first adjustment and to his amazement had experienced an "80% reduction in pain".
Bill showed positive objective improvement as well and improved further with subsequent adjustments. He was thrilled and his pain has never returned to anything more than a minimal level after he suffered daily for three years!
What is the value of this outcome to Bill? What price do you place on your health? To quote the commercial, your health is priceless and for everything else there is MasterCard. (We do accept MasterCard for restoration of your health, as well as all other major credit cards.) In my life experience, where there is a will, there is a way, if it is important enough.
Dr. Matthew Norton is a chiropractor located in Fresno California.
