EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Dr. Perry Rush
In this special interview, you will hear from one of the great pioneers and unsung heroes of the Blair Upper Cervical Technique.
In this interview, you will get a glimpse some of Dr. Rush’s most memorable patient stories.
Helping a six month baby have a bowel movement for the first time.
A man who had lost his strength in his arm. Getting function back in an arm after one adjustment.
A woman who completely recovered from failed low back surgery and bulging disc.
Being accused of being a quack.
Recovering from severe headaches.
Discussing the healing process, whether it is fast or slow.
And much, much more!
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
TRANSCRIPT
You asked me to tell you some of the stories. There are so many. [laughs] I had some stories here in front of me, but I'm thinking of the little child who is brought in to me by a mother who is referred in to by her mother who is referred in by the dad, the grandpa. A little child shows up in my office from these people who are patients of mine. He's six months old. He hasn't had a bowel movement his entire life.
Wow.
It's just his body is not functioning that way and so they have to give it animus all the time. They brought him in. I palpated his little spine. To palpate means to feel with your fingers to ascertain information about the muscles and the positions of the vertebrae.
Yes. Thanks for explaining that.
Okay. I give him a little adjustment, a tiny little adjustment with a finger. You wouldn't even know that he even got an adjustment just by looking at what I did.
It's just a little tap really.
Yes. That's all it is because children are so easy to adjust. If you get on the right segment and did the right direction, it's very easy to adjust. Anyway, they go home. That evening, they're at a party. I guess there are some friends and celebrating something rather and I get this phone call from them at the party.
Oh. [laughter]
They say, "Our baby just had his first bowel movement ever on his own." That was just hours after he'd gotten his first adjustment.
You were saying the mom was so excited that at first, you thought actually there was something wrong.
Yes. [laughter] Okay. Anyway, within a week, and now, it was sporadic, but within a week, that child was having no need for help, was having bowel movements on his own, and that child stayed under care, I guess until he was about 17 years old, but anyway, the whole family, they referred in so many patients.
Anyway, I'm also thinking of a man who came to me. This man came from Texas. He came here because he got an awesome job offer. He came out here. He's working in this job. He buys some property, so they can also have a farm because he wants to have a farm or ranch along with this wonderful job he has. He's beginning to experience a loss of function in his arm. It got to the point where there was a 60% loss of function in his arm and the medical doctors couldn't do anything about it.
Loss of function like it was limp or numb or something like that?
Well, a loss of strength.
Okay. I see.
Loss of strength is how he defined it. He was diagnosed as having neck arthritis or arthritis in his neck and he had been going to his family physician and a neurologist. They both told him because of this arthritis, there was nothing could be done from him. He was extremely nervous. His wife had been to a chiropractor in Texas. He had no confidence or faith in them because she hadn't been helped at all, but for some reason, he thought, "Well, nobody can help me. Maybe I'll try a chiropractor. I don't believe in them, but now, what can I do?"
Yes. [laughs]
He comes in to me and explains his situation. I go through the whole process. I examined him. I take X-rays. I give an adjustment. I found that his very top vertebra had been misaligned. I put pressure on his brain stem. That vertebra had moved backwards and to the right against his skull. I was putting pressure right there near the brain stem area and I told him, "Look, I don't know if this is causing your problem or not because you got a lot of arthritis in your spine that could be interfering with things, but I do know that you have interference and I think I can take care of this interference near the brain stem. That's what we're going to do. I'm not treating your symptom, but I'm getting rid of that nerve interference."
I give an adjustment. He doesn't feel anything. He's a big guy, big neck. Doesn't feel anything. He goes home, tells his wife that I'm a quack.
[laughter] Oh, great. That makes me feel good.
I didn't learn about this until later. [laughter] He tells his wife that I'm a quack and he regained all of the function back in his arm. Excuse me. He's thinking about his wife now.
Okay. How long did it take for him to get his function back? Do you know how--
He had one adjustment the entire time he was under my care, and that was for several years.
Wow.
One adjustment.
One adjustment.
He held that adjustment. It was the top vertebra, the atlas vertebra as we call it. I have here in my notes the arm strength returns normal within one week.
Wow.
He goes home not feeling any different. [laughs] Thinking something should've happened and thinking about the failure of his wife in Texas with the other chiropractor, I mean he just blurts out, "He's a quack," but things began to change. He got his function back. He comes in to care and then he tells a story that because of that, he refers in his wife.
His wife didn't want to come because she had had no good results with chiropractic the whole time that she was out there. It's interesting that that chiropractor who did not help her at all warned her not to go to those chiropractors who only adjust the neck when she was out in Texas.
Yes. There you go.
She's saying, "Well, what did he adjust?" "Well, he adjusted my neck." "Oh, well, I can't go then." Although, she got no results from the other chiropractor, what the--
She still listened to it, the advice.
Yes. It's planted in her head, and that's oftentimes the way things work.
Yes. I feel like a lot of people go see their medical doctor too and they get told, "You can't see a chiropractor."
Well, it's a human thing.
Yes.
That's just the way the human mind works.
I feel like if it's my body, it's my choice who I want to go to.
Well, if things make sense, then you ought to be able to try it. Listening to other people, it's a good thing, but it can be a bad thing if you don't investigate yourself.
Right. Okay.
Proper investigation is so important with any subject we want to tackle.
That's true. It has to make sense.
Okay. Anyway, he refers Nancy in. She didn't want to come, but he insisted. [chuckles] She comes in and she's had failed low back surgery for a ruptured disc in 1981. She's got a ruptured disc and she's got these back pains. As a chiropractor, I'm thinking, "Wow. I don't know whether we can get rid of a problem like that. The disc has collapsed and now, she's got bone on bone and that's probably creating her low back problem. I don't know if she's going to respond at all, but I do know when Nancy comes in, she has nerve interference."
My examination showed me, and my X-ray showed me that-- and I've got it written down here, she had an upper cervical misalignment. It was the C1 atlas vertebra but let me tell you more about her situation. She said she had recurrent low back, daily low back spasms in her back resulted in limited standing, sitting, and walking. She had debilitating chronic headaches.
Oh, wow.
Her right arm and neck had pain all the time. She was a mess. She was an absolute mess, but she didn't want to come in to me because her family chiropractor back in Texas didn't want her to come to somebody like me, I guess. I don't know why he felt so necessary to tell her not to come to somebody who just adjust the neck, but nonetheless, she was being seen by her family physician, by an orthopedic surgeon, and the chiropractic physician. All of which were not getting her the results that she needed at that particular time.
Eventually, it sounds like she must have been convinced to come to you anyway, right?
Well, the husband made her come.
Yes. Okay.
Anyway, she gets five adjustments the whole time she's under my care. Those adjustments were rather closely followed by another adjustment because she was not holding her adjustment. I adjust on what's called a drop headpiece mechanism. It's when you give a little adjustment, that headpiece will drop down about a half inch. It really mobilizes that vertebra to move much easier with just a small force, but I was cocking the headpiece and adjusting her.
It doesn't hurt. It is really comfortable that way, but with her, because she came in with really bad headaches, just the dropping of that mechanism, that half inch really exaggerated her headaches. I adjusted her. Well, thrusted on her. [chuckles] If it was an adjustment, it didn't seem to hold very well. I found myself adjusting her more frequently in the beginning. The pains that she was feeling when the headpiece would drop were just more than she could stand. She didn't want to come back because this was hurting her, which was very unusual.
What did you do? You'd adjusted without the drop?
I adjusted without the drop. I thrusted without the drop and it was the first time that I saw no clear-out. She was getting good clear-outs before, but it was only lasting for one week.
Okay. A clear-out, what is that?
A clear-out means-- thank you for that. [laughter] It simply means that there are no evidence of nerve interference when she came back in the office for her post-check which is usually two days later.
Yes. That's how you define that someone's holding their adjustment.
Yes. When I thrust on them, I don't want to-- My approach is to give them at least 48 hours before I check them to see if there's nerve interference that is gone because many times much of that stuff that's residual in the neck does not go away immediately, even though you adjust the segment because there's all kinds of other things that creep in, inflammations, irritations, muscles that have adapted this position for so long.
Anyway, I don't want to check them until the body has had ample time to respond and then start making corrections with the adaptative curves that are in the spine. That takes a little bit of time. I give patients 48 hours before I want to check them again to see if that truly was, in fact, an adjustment. She would come back in, have good signs, and her checks would look good, but she would only hold for a week. That's not usual for me. Usually, a patient would hold for weeks even months at a time. Weeks or months or even years sometimes.
Yes, that's right. When I got my adjustment, I was holding for a year or two at a time, but most of my patients, within a three-month period of time when they first begin, they might get one, two, three, or four adjustments usually. I'm checking them frequently, usually every week for a few weeks and then every couple of weeks. That's how I check them, but she was clearing out, showing no evidence of nerve interference, but she wouldn't hold it very long.
I put her on the table and adjust her again. Well, how'd that make her head feel? Horrible. She almost stopped but because I was seeing these good clear-outs of nerve interference, even though she wasn't holding long, I urged her husband and her just hang in there because we're getting good clear-outs. We're seeing good results, even though you're not symptomatically seeing anything. At the end of a five-week period of time, she writes me a letter and she says, "Dr. Rush, I am so thankful that I didn't quit because those first few weeks were horrible for me," which again is very unusual because the adjustments, they don't hurt.
I've seen probably thousands of patients behind the scenes. Like you said, it's not usual for that to happen, but it seems like if it happens, it's more often with headaches than other symptoms. I don't know why that is.
That's interesting, isn't it?
Yes.
Because you've been able to observe those things in a chiropractic office working there. That's so interesting.
We typically just recommend to people that they commit to at least three months. Give it three months because it can take that long sometimes.
Yes, and me too, I do the same thing, three months. They might only get one adjustment during those three months or they might get numbers. I've got it recorded here that she received five adjustments total her whole time under my care. Most of those occurred within the first few weeks.
Yes, and then long-term results?
Long-term results, she was pain-free, pain-free in four weeks. Now remember, now think about this. She had failed surgery, it's called failed low back surgery syndrome because they get in there, do the surgery, but it doesn't eliminate the problem. She had recurrent daily low back spasms resulting in limited standing, sitting, walking. She had debilitating chronic headaches, right arm, and neck pain.
You would think that a thrust on a neck vertebra, how is that possibly going to eliminate these problems? They've been so long. She's had them and she's had surgeries. She had chiropractic care for quite a number of months and it just didn't help at all. She's in a bad way. When people come into me, I'm wondering, I'm thinking, "Okay, I know you have nerve interference, but I have no idea whether you're going to respond because of how long these things have been there, et cetera, et cetera.
Even me as a chiropractor, I don't know what's going to happen even when I eliminate nerve interference. What happened to her was rather amazing, but she was pain-free in four weeks and she stayed under my care for months and months and months. They moved away to Midwest and she wrote me a letter a year later saying everything was still good.
Excellent.
It's still wonderful. Her husband, Ray, who had sent her in, let's see, he got one adjustment. He was still doing good at the end of that one year when they had moved away as well. They would be back.
Great.
Now here's the thing, Nancy, before she was under chiropractic care with me, so they had moved to Spartanburg and she's at work, and her boss would let her lay down on a cot or a bed for a few minutes or 15 minutes to ease the spasms in her back. He was understanding because he had really bad back pain.
Did he come too?
Yes, well, later on. Because of Nancy's results and Ray's results, her husband, which were phenomenal, they worked and tried to get him to come in. He was very reluctant to come in. He did not want to go to a quack. He trusted his medical doctors that were treating him and he wasn't going to go to a chiropractor quack. He saw the results that happened to him. Now, he didn't decide to come in to my office despite the fact that Nancy and Ray are trying to say, "Look what happened to us?"
He's going in and he has spasms in his back so bad that he is bedrest, bedrest for five weeks. He can't get out of bed. He's finally able to get up but when he comes in, he looked like a really crooked man. His pelvis is thrust off to one side, his upper body is off to the other side. He was a really crooked individual. I was able to manage, I got the X-rays, examined his spine, found a-- What was it? I'm going to my record here. He found atlas subluxation right up there near the brainstem.
Of course, what does this do? It causes a compensatory curve in the neck, it causes a compensatory curve in the low back, compensatory curve of the pelvis. His pelvis rocks up and these muscles are in spasm. He's feeling it out his entire spine and it's creating pressure on the discs and his lower back to note it, it's really bad. The doctors are saying, "You got to have low back surgery because you've got pressure on those discs." Now I know, I know that discs can be, depending upon this situation, discs can be reabsorbed. They bulge a little bit. They're not like a balloon. They're not, they're not made like that.
It's like a bagel with cream cheese and you squish the bagel and the cream cheese squeezes out, right?
No.
No.
[laughs] Well, it can be described that way, but the disc is so strong and so powerful. It has an inner gelatin-type substance in the middle of that disc, and it has a really hard cartilaginous structure all around it. What a disc will do, if you have a spinal curvature that's even a compensation where your pelvis has rocked up on one side, there's a curve in the lower lumbar area, the low back area, it will begin to press on that. Over time, that hard outer structure will begin to give way and it will bulge a little bit, but it's not like a balloon.
Well, it does bulge like a balloon, but what I've seen happen is that lower curve begins to go away and takes the pressure off that disc, then it-- I don't know if reabsorbing is the word I would use, but it takes that bulging tissue and draws it back in a little bit. Just enough to take the pressure off those lumbar nerve roots that are creating sciatica and all kinds of things. An upper cervical misalignment creates curvatures in the neck, creates curvatures in the mid-thoracic, curvatures in the spine, and the pelvis tilts.
You walk around that way for a long time, where are you going to begin to feel it? Usually, in the low back. From what? An upper neck misalignment to create that whole story. If you can't analyze and find where the origin culprit is, maybe it does come from the low back, but not usually. It's usually coming from that upper neck. You know that by the fact that when you adjust these people and they have all of these spinal curvatures that begin to [unintelligible 00:17:44] and go away and the spine gets better, then that's where this thing comes from. Anyway, I'm not sure what question brought us to that point, but--
This was the boss. You had the husband and then you had the wife, and then you have the boss.
Fred comes in, and this is the boss.
He had the bulging disc. My guess is that his disc came back in.
Here's the thing, let me read his original symptoms. Several years of nagging low back pain became severe, requiring, I said five, three and a half weeks of bed confinement. Surgery was recommended after the diagnosis of the disc herniation. Now, in the letter that he wrote me, he wrote me his chiropractic story. He says, "I didn't believe in chiropractic, but I was desperate. When they told me they were going to operate on my back disc surgery and stuff like that, I got the courage to listen to Nancy, my employee, and Ray, her husband, and I decided to come in." He comes in and he tells his story. In his words, if I can paraphrase this.
Paraphrase. [laughs]
He said, "Well, my name is Barry." Because I don't remember the exact words. I was just reading his story there. Anyway, he was saying, "This chiropractor was telling me that my problem in my low back was coming from an upper neck subluxation. I couldn't believe he was telling me that. It seemed like a fairytale. I was there, I had the X-rays. I decided I was going to go ahead." He gets an adjustment.
He's laying on the table where I rest my patients after an adjustment because I want things to settle and I want that vertebra to hold because it's been out of alignment so long. I don't want the muscles to pull it out again. I lay my patients down. He's laying there and he feels his whole pelvis begin to shift, and then between his shoulder blade, it's like, something's happening. I'm like, "What's going on here?"
It's rotating back here. I see you rotating your shoulders and pelvis there.
The brain is trying to tell the rest of the body, "Well, I don't need that curvature there anymore and so I'm going to start revamping some of these muscles that have been contracting to pull that. It's trying to undo what's going on. He gets up and he tells me, he says, "My pain is gone." Wow, that quick.
He says, "My pain is gone." I'm a chiropractor and I'm thinking, "You just walk a few steps, it's going to come back." That's what I'm thinking because I've never seen something, especially when they're ready to do low back surgery because of this disc.
Usually, you're expecting a long process, right?
Oh, yes. Well, I'm expecting some time to occur, but he tells me, "The pain is gone." I'm thinking, "Oh, my goodness, before he can even walk back into my office over here, he's going to start feeling it," but he didn't. That one adjustment, it just was miracles for him. How many adjustments did he get? Go back to my record. He got three adjustments the entire time he was under my care and that was for months and months and months. Three chiropractic adjustments. He would come in just to help people understand how this might work, he got that adjustment, he felt immediate relief but that doesn't mean the problems have had time to resolve.
The muscles that are holding that [unintelligible 00:21:14] proper position had been out of alignment so long and those muscles have adapted that you need them to hold that adjustment. If they lose that adjustment, you don't want them going a week or two or three or a month before they come back and get readjusted. In the beginning, I'll have the patient come back for a post-check, I want to see them three times a week for a couple of weeks because I know that the average person is going to lose that first adjustment within a certain amount of time and when they lose it, I want to be right there with it so that the body can begin that healing and mending thing.
If you keep an adjustment and they hold that adjustment for one week, but you don't see him for three weeks, had they made any progress?
No, because they've had one week of progress, one week of undoing the progress and then one more week of going backwards.
You just want them to hold that adjustment for things to adapt.
Do want me to stop it?
Oh, you can exit. When a patient comes in, I get my mind back on tracking and gets an adjustment, the most important thing to me is that they hold that adjustment. Now, I held my first adjustment for a couple of years, but the average patient will go one to three weeks before they lose that adjustment. This I know, go one to three weeks before they lose that adjustment. I don't know when they're going to lose it, that's why I want to see a patient three times a week. They come in. Even if they come in on the next visit and still have pain, if they have no evidence of nerve compression based on my checks I won't touch them.
A patient might be thinking, I hurt. There's an educational process that goes on if you're going to tell them, "Look, I love the checks that I'm seeing, the pelvis is balanced, the curves here are getting better, there's no evidence showing up on my checks that you need an adjustment, so let's just let this go. We'll follow you and we'll see you in two days." Because I know they're going to lose that adjustment within three weeks.
Then as you get more stable, you get spaced out further.
Absolutely. My idea is to get that patient spaced out so that within the first three months of care, they're only needing to come in once a month. Some patients I'll say, "No, no, I don't like what we see. Let's see in two weeks." That happened to my dad. My dad was under Dr. Munsey's care for serious problems that he had, then he moved to Arizona. Dad feels like he's lost his adjustment, but he doesn't trust the 600 chiropractors you're going to pass going back to Southern California in his car, so he's going to drive all the way back six hours to have Dr. Munsey check him. Dr. Munsey checks him in he says, "You do not need an adjustment."
He drove six hours one way, you do not need an adjustment. Dad felt like he needed one. Dr. Munsey, "No, you do not need an adjustment. However, I'd like to see you in two weeks." Dad drives all the way back, he comes back Southern California, drives all those hours, gets back and Dr. Munsey says, "No, you're holding your adjustment." This was the chiropractor who saved my dad's life, this is a chiropractor who solved the problems that nobody else could. Dad's listening to him.
He trusted him.
What I have going for me oftentimes is when people come in, they've been referred by somebody who had some major problem and I just- the chiropractic makes so much sense logically and rationally as you explain it to people. When people don't get an adjustment, I explain why. Every time they come in, I want them to know the reason why I'm not going to or the reason why I am going to adjust them. This education that a patient gets under that kind of care, it makes so much sense to the average patient.
I think there's two conclusions that I would like to draw from this conversation. First is the patient education. The healing takes time, so that it's a process. We're in agreement, give it at least three months and stick with it. I see that there's a couple of major things that make people want to drop out of care or quit. Number one is, and we've seen examples of both, either it gets worse before it gets better and people go, "Okay, that hurt, I don't want to do this." Or you get immediate results, and I feel fine now, so I don't need to come back but stick with the process. That's number one.
Number two, of which I think is the larger theme of your life, frankly, and this conversation today is the ripple effects. We've talked about patients who get better and then refer someone else and then refer someone else and then refer someone else. That is the goal. Our goal is for you to not need to come in and see us because you're well but then at that point, you tell your friends and your family so that they can get well. Secondly, in your life, as someone who's-- teaching has been your main career, teaching other healers. You were talking about Dr. Lunars, who said, he's adjusted 15,000 patients because of what he learned from you.
How many students have you had? Estimate how many students have you had that you have taught this work too?
I've taught it to a whole lot more than have wanted to get into this line of thinking of line of practice. You've asked a question that gets us off into a tangent that you may not want to go in. Very few chiropractors, when this work was taught in the school, very few were-- well, because it had to be taught as an elective and to take an elective, I taught my elective at seven o'clock in the morning. A chiropractic curriculum is so hard anyway, that if you had to be very convinced that you wanted to learn this work, to be able to get involved with it. There are very few that really came out of the situation.
There's some very dedicated people who do it. It's the same now it's not seven o'clock in the morning but right now, my husband is teaching [739] elective at that same college, Roman College and they are giving up their weekend.
Yes, they are. I gave up my life really, for what I really wanted to do. I told them when they recruited me to Sherman College I says, "I'm not coming down there to teach if I can also practice." At the time, you couldn't get into state practice because the state board had closed it down to Sherman graduates.
That's incredible.
It's incredible.
Politics got the-
Dr. Gould and others sued the board, won the suit and we were able to get into the state. It's knowing that I can now get into the state if I took and passed the state board, which I did, I was able to practice. They wanted me to teach the bloodwork and teach other things at the school, but I would go in at seven o'clock in the morning, I'd be out by two o'clock in the afternoon and then I'd take an hour break and go into my practice. Then I would work on patients until I was done, which is sometimes six, seven or eight o'clock at night. I did this for years and years and years and years.
You've talked just a little bit about sacrifice and giving your life.
I didn't feel like it was a real-- I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
No, I was interrupting you. This is all very interesting and we could speak all day but I don't want to completely wear you out or anything like that. I'm trying to make it go in a direction.
You go ahead.
Dr. Rush, you could have made a lot of money doing something else. You talked about how your dedication to teaching didn't make you as much money as some other things. You rejected the model of following what chiropractic could do for you seeing a lot of patients and doing a lot of things all the time so that you could make more money, you didn't want that. You sacrifice some things with money, where you talked about with time, with dedication. Do you have any regrets? If you could go back and do something again, is there anything that you would do differently? Well, to get the result that I feel happy about, I wouldn't be able to go back and undo that. No, I do not regret. I do not regret my having taken the course that I took. I note that my wife wanted to live out West where my family lived. My family loves my wife.
She's easy to love. I've known her one day and I fell in love immediately. [chuckles] [door rings] Come in. Okay, Dr. Rush, it's been an absolute pleasure so far and we have covered so much. You have a lifetime of things to share and there's no way we can capture all of that in a podcast. I really want to know, is there something that you feel like you want to share that I haven't asked you about and that we haven't covered so far?
It was a difficult decision to teach. I had two different chiropractic college presidents wanting me to come and teach. I did give up my life, so to speak, relative to what I wanted to do. My wife wanted so much to be out in California with my folks. We have family out there in Utah and Idaho and California. I miss not being-- My sons and my daughter never got to be with their cousins the way they needed to be. We'd just have to fly back out there sometime on occasion. In that regard, it was a sacrifice.
The fact that I was never able to provide the money to my children to take care of their needs, that bothered me. Other than that, our needs have been met so well. I'm a believer in God and I believe in Jesus Christ. I'm one of those people that have that thought. I look back and I see doors were opened and I was shoved through so many times. I looked back and I said, "Wow, that worked out so well. How did that happen?" Time and time and time again. In chiropractic, I don't feel that it was an accident that Betty Clevenger referred me into her chiropractor and that this whole thing started that way.
Dr. Munsey sent me out here and the chiropractic college presidents recruited me and that somehow, I got involved with the Blair work, which to me was just the key factor that made-- To me, it was just an awesome technique that helped people. Now, here's the thing. What would have happened to that little baby, six months old, if that baby had not had a chiropractic adjustment so that they could have bowel movements on its own?
Yes, I don't know.
What would have happened to Nancy, who had these horrible headaches, back pain, spasms? If a chiropractic adjustment in the right area at the right time and no more, no less given to her, somebody knowing when and when not to adjust, what would have happened to her? What would have happened to Ray Bailey, the guy that lost 60% of the strength of his arm when he moved out here, and now it's threatening his new job and his ability to perform. People's lives are just-- What would have happened to my dad if he had not had Dr. Munsey give him an adjustment that took two months to begin to manifest a positive result? What would have happened to my dad? Story after story after story.
There are so many stories. Every chiropractor, I don't care what their technique, every chiropractor has the opportunity and blessing to be able to share these kinds of stories with people when medicine failed. I'm not down on medicine per se. I am down on treating the body all the time with drugs when in fact the real cause of the problem may not even be looked at. If they say something negative about chiropractors when they don't really understand it themselves, then I'm down on that approach. I really feel like people ought to be critical thinkers.
If they go to a doctor and they're constantly taking medications or drugs and they're not getting better or whatever, and somebody tells them about chiropractic, well, I was reluctant to go in to listen to a health talk. Chiropractic does what to your bones and your back? That didn't sound interesting to me. I wanted to be an airline pilot or a forest ranger or something like that. What I would say is if you ever have the opportunity to get introduced to chiropractic, maybe you ought to go hear a health talk, a good health talk. Now, I myself would not go to just any chiropractor, and I'm not telling you what chiropractor to go to, but I'm just telling you like they're--
They're good ones and not so good ones.
Exactly.
It's just like--
Every profession. You check it out, though. Check it out and it may be a lifesaver for you. So often people hear bad or negative things about something, and because of that, they won't go. I'm saying, is that the way you really want to investigate a subject? You probably ought to look at both sides of an issue and study it. Chiropractic is one of those things that if I hadn't done that, my goodness, I don't know where I'd be today, or where the many patients or the many students that have gone through the curriculum and come back and talk to me and say thank you. That's a pretty good reward to see that kind of thing happen.
Thank you for that. You've summed it up really well. Do you have a favorite quote or a favorite life verse or something like that that you continue to go back to motivate you?
Sure. "You never know how far reaching something you may think or say today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow." That's a quote from B. J. Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, who was an upper cervical advocate.
That is absolutely amazing. Why don't you say that one more time?
"You never know how far reaching something you may think, say, or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow."
I think that you have lived that out.
Well, thank you.