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How it all began......
March 1, 2017— Dr. Z
I started chiropractic school at Logan College of Chiropractic in the fall of 2007. At Logan, there are three classes that start each year. The class that starts in the fall is always the largest. I was a bit overwhelmed. I heard stories of people having their high school and college sports career's saved by chiropractic. Many people had parents or siblings that had been or were currently chiropractors. I had none of that.
We started with basic science and some palpation classes. Palpation is the ability to feel what is going on with the joints under the skin and what allows a diagnosis to be made. Combined with imaging such as CT scans, x-rays, and MRI's, and orthopedic testing (seeing what movements a patient can or cannot to perform to assess function of a joint or muscle), palpation allows a chiropractor to "see" what is happening with a patient and take the appropriate steps to address and correct the problem and get the patient feeling better and functioning better. We went through numerous courses on how to adjust, when to adjust, how to diagnose a patient, and the philosophy behind chiropractic. It still felt like something was missing.
It wasn't until my sixth trimester of school (out of 10) that something finally clicked. I took an elective that only Logan offered called Active Release Techniques, or ART. It shifted a paradigm in my head of how I would treat patients and what my path would be in my time remaining at school. To be ART certified, you have to go for three basic courses: Spine, Upper Extremity, and Lower Extremity. Logan only offered spine, so I decided that before I graduated, I wanted to finish the other two courses. I completed lower extremity and upper extremity the following year.
What I found was that while chiropractic works, it was not a complete picture. By the time I graduated, I had completed my full body certification and had changed the way that I would practice.
Yes, that's me. You may wonder, “Why the title?” To be honest, it has been a long and winding road to get to where I am. I won't bore you with the more mundane aspects of my life, but I do think its important to know where I am coming from as a chiropractor.
I started going to school for, of all things, marine biology. I have always been fascinated by the ocean and I thought that this would be a good fit. I even went so far as to join a research group studying coral reefs while I was attending the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. While I had an awesome time, I realized that the two weeks scuba diving and collecting samples was then followed by sitting in a lab for the rest of the year—something I couldn't handle. So I decided to follow another path. I thought dentistry would be good. Why not? I would get to work with and help people and it made a lot of sense. Then I went to dental school for a year. Yikes! Not my thing. What to do now? I moved back home, started substitute teaching and working towards a master's in public health at the University of Illinois—Springfield. I realized through the public health courses that I wanted to help people, but I needed a way to be able to do so and still be happy with the job that I had. So I decided on chiropractic and enrolled in chiropractic school. Don't ask why I made the choice because even now, I don't know why. I had never been to a chiropractor, I had never been adjusted, I really had no vision of what my future held and where I was going, I just knew that I wasn't going to be happy where I was at and that getting a degree that I could use to find a job made more sense. So I started to prepare for chiropractic school while finishing my master's degree. I found a place to live and I got all set to go. Wow, was I in for a shock...
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Dr. Z offers the tools and experience to return you to a pain-free and active lifestyle, whether you have experienced a sports injury or have chronic pain.