Humbled…

Everyday I’m humbled to be working with the people I do. I often have people present with such pain and problems and they’ve been EVERYWHERE that their skepticsm gets in the way of rational thinking. I mean, if you could have an option over surgery (sometimes surgery IS necessary) don’t you think that it would be worth it?

I often hear excuses as to why they should or shouldn’t do this or that. I recently had a gentleman that I believed needed PT and chiropractic over a program like we do, he didn’t want that. He wanted to do something else…reason? His neighbor is a PT and he cannot stand his neighbor, so he didn’t want to do PT. Does that make any sense?

I also hear other things as well,  just as odd. I had a woman who told me that the only reason she kept doing the drugs and not seeking anything else is because her insurance paid for the drugs 100% and if she did anything else she would have a co-pay. This was a woman whom by all accounts wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck, had a great career and a supporting husband who also had a good job. After I convinced her to get the MRI… her back was shot! Next stop, the surgery train. She’s got no choice. She started crying, and saying she shouldn’t have been so dumb. I didn’t know what to say, because I agreed with her. I mean you can’t take those co-pays with you when you die. Plus, this gal was so miserable with pain that she was living NO life. Yeah, you have saved money, but at what cost? You could be using those saved co-pays to be taking a vacation, instead it’s going to be fusion and probably 6 months of not much. I hope and pray that it works for her.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that I was humbled recently by a long term patient. She injured her back really bad for the first time in 5 years. She could hardly walk. She had tears streaming down her cheeks. It breaks your heart when you see that. We did our thing and I was happy to report that yesterday, just 6 days later from the initial injury she was “95%”. She gave me a wonderful thank you card, she gave me a big batch of Christmas cookies 2 days before that. Plus she gave me a gift card to go to lunch! It was awesome. Totally unnecessary. But she wanted to express her gratitude for seeing her over the weekend to make sure she got well as quickly as possible. Hey, you gotta do what it takes right? How can I ethically KNOW that there is more to be done and then just say “oh well, I gotta sleep in on Saturday”. Not at our office. It’s all about results and doing what it takes to get well. Her appreciation is why I do what I do. I love it. I feed off of it.

So if you have a back or neck problem that’s not responding to other treatment methods and you want to be seen by a fantastic group of health professionals that care about YOU and getting you well then you should check out our place. Spinal Decompression of Minnesota. You can visit our website to learn more if you like…www.SpinalDecompressionOfMn.com

Be well,

Dr. Jeff Lavell  

ps: I went through the H1N1 as did my whole family. It went smooth for everyone else, I was the sickest (it really wasn’t that bad other than the 2 days of 104 temp that absolutely wiped me out!) and ended up getting a touch of pneumonia. Overall, the whole experience was over rated…that’s for sure. My take home lesson here is that I knew what the pneumonia symptoms were right away. Make sure that if you have ANY breathing problems, wheezing, shortness of breath (particularly on exhale), shallower breathing than normal, or any “fluidy” sounds in your lung (breathe out and it sounds like you have a party going on in your chest) that you get in right away to your doctor, urgent care, or ER. That’s often the start of pneumonia and you don’t mess around with that. In fact, that’s how most people lose their lives to any type of influenza.