Every Cloud Has Its Silver Lining

I didn’t choose chiropractic.  Chiropractic chose me.

In 1990, at the age of 16, I was involved in a single car accident in which I lost control of my vehicle going 80 miles per hour.  While taking a left hand turn, the car’s rear end lost traction and I went into a skid.  Being an inexperienced driver, my first reaction was to turn stronger into the turn.  That was a big mistake!

The car spun harder and ended up skidding sideways onto a grassy median.  The car came to a crashing halt when it slammed into, knocked over and wrapped itself around a light pole.  The impact knocked the moon roof off the car, pushed the glove compartment all the way to the middle console and smashed the steering wheel up against the driver’s seat.  I should have been crushed, but I can actually remember somehow, perhaps by the aid of an angel, crawling out of the car through the displaced moon roof, looking back at my Mom’s demolished car and deliriously repeating, “I gotta get this fixed!”

It was moments later that I first noticed the intense pain in my chest and I had to lay down on the ground.  Someone who lived close by and heard the sound of crushing metal was the first to arrive on the scene and discover me lying next to the vehicle.  She asked if I was okay, told me help was on the way and asked for my parents contact information.

I was transported to the hospital where I stayed for five days.  I spent two days in I.C.U. as the primary concern was my heart that lay bruised behind my broken sternum and displaced ribs.  I have never experienced that amount of pain before or since!

When I was released from the hospital, I essentially spent three months on a lazy boy because I could not lie flat.  I couldn’t move, heck, I could breathe without excruciating pain.  Laughing was not possible and if I felt a sneeze coming on I would have tears roll down my cheeks before actually sneezing because I knew the incredible amount of pain I was about to experience.  Even heavy narcotics couldn’t come close to taming the pain.

When I had to go back to school (because they only let my grades carry over for one quarter), I wondered how I was going to make it through the day as my struggles to move without tremendous pain were still very real and apparent.  My mother hated seeing me like that and decided to take me to a chiropractor, which I knew nothing about.  That visit and all the subsequent visits changed me and my life for the better.

I started to finally recover from my injuries AND I discovered a new passion – a desire to help people in the same manner.  Even though my knowledge of what a chiropractor was and what they did was still limited, I knew right then and there that I was meant to be one.

I had no way of knowing that while I lay there all those months in agony that I would end up here.  I am grateful to be alive and feel blessed to have an understanding of true suffering.  I enjoy my life’s work and enjoy going to work every day.  I feel privileged to serve people and help them in the same manner I was helped all those years ago.

All of us are going to have some dark moments in our lives.  While I know how challenging it is to go through those difficult moments, you must keep the faith that it too shall pass.  In the end it just might be the start of some incredible blessing.