Ruth Elder with Blair Chiropractic Clinic in Lubbock talks about how she found help with severe headaches, and crippling chronic pain.
A story of how Blair Upper Cervical changed her life and now the lives of many others.
Ruth and Dr. Gordon Elder, partners in life and business
Hi. I’m Ruth with Blair Chiropractic. I want to tell the story of why it is that we are here and do what we do.
So, when I met my husband, Gordon, he was not a chiropractor. He was just a young American that I fell in love with. And we got married, despite the fact that my health was so bad that I couldn’t do normal things. It took me two extra years to finish High School. On any given day, I never knew whether I could make it through the day or not. If I did have things in the evening, I needed to take lots of pain pills in order to participate in any kind of activity. I had severe headaches. Back pain since I was six years old. From the time that I was eleven until I was in my twenties, there was never a time that I didn’t have a headache. It wasn’t like I got headaches, I had a headache that just lasted that long. It varied in intensity all the way from laying in a dark room, to where it would be so bad that I couldn’t remember to finish a sentence, to being just kind of this nuisance up in my head. New things went wrong with me all of the time.
I got a tennis elbow and I got sick more often. And if I got sick, it lasted and lasted and I didn’t get well. I was a mess. Every single year of my life, it was worse than the year before. Even though it went up and down, overall, it went down.
Nobody could find out what was wrong with me despite the fact that I went to see all kinds of medical experts.
As this progressed, I was starting to feel like I had this pressure right here (where the head and neck come together in the upper neck/base of the skull). I was kind of wondering if that’s what was causing it? I even had nightmares that I had cancer and nobody would believe me, or that I had a brain tumor right here.
So, a year after my husband and I were married, I am from Norway and we had planned to stay in Norway but we moved to California, where he was from, because he had an opportunity to work full time and go to school. We figured that it made sense to focus on his career versus mine because chances were that I would not have the health to support us in Norway. So, in California, he had an Upper Cervical Doctor and he said, “I want you to see my chiropractor. I think it might help you.
” I had been to a chiropractor before that twisted my neck real hard and I was worse than I’ve ever been for the next two weeks. So, I was a little skeptical...uh, a lot skeptical”
But, I did trust my husband. He said:
“ You know, this guy is different, let’s go and see him.”
Before he asked me any questions, Dr. Muncy did some tests on me and he said,
“There is a bone out of alignment.”
He pointed to the spot that I knew where it was coming from, putting pressure on nerves, right here. Tears came into my eyes because finally somebody has an answer for me! So, what he was finding was a bone, the top bone in my neck right under my skull that had moved. Actually, in my case, to my left. That’s what happened here too, it moved to the left a little bit. He took a series of x-rays, laid me on my side, gave me an adjustment that was so light that I didn’t feel much, and then...I gradually started healing. That first night, the first thing that I noticed was that I slept through the night.
I had never slept through the night, almost never, my whole life. I’ve always had trouble sleeping. I slept through the whole night and then I started feeling more relaxed and started feeling a little bit better. It wasn’t a miracle, in that everything was gone all at once but, it was a gradual process. This was in 1994 so, it was a long time ago now. Over the next few years all of the severe problems that I had, gradually started getting better. Sometimes one thing would be worse and one thing would be better but, instead of gradually getting worse, I got better.
A month after my first adjustment I was feeling well enough that I thought, you know, maybe it’s time for me to get a job? I had just moved to a new country and so, I didn’t have a job yet. I wasn’t settled. So, I thought that I should talk to my doctor about this because it might affect my progress. So, I mentioned that I was looking for a job. He said, “Well, what kind of job are you looking for?” I said, “Well, I don’t know, I haven't looked yet. I just wanted you to know that I might be more active. I don’t know what I can get, coming from a different country and only having a high school diploma.” He closed the door and said,
“I have a part time position here. You can apply if you want.”
I got that job. As I started working there it was very exciting because not only was I starting to feel better but, day in and day out I literally saw hundreds of people every day! Well, not hundreds of people every day but,
I saw hundreds of people. I saw people every day that were healing.
People like myself that got help for headaches and they were sleeping better. But, even things I didn’t know. I heard patients come in and say, “Hey! I cut my blood pressure medication in half!” And, “Oh, I didn’t know that what this does really helps diabetes. I’m working with my doctor on lowering my medication.” And, long story short, we decided that this is really exciting. It’s working for us, it’s working for a lot of other people. We decided to change course in our life and work together on helping other people the same way that we had been helped.