EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Dr. Gordon Elder
This is part two of their Story and tells the story of how and why they came to Lubbock to take over as owners of the Blair Chiropractic Clinic. Part one of this episode was aired on “What Pain in the Neck?” on February 6th. Click here to listen to the episode on our website
Dr. Elder came to visit the Blair Chiropractic Clinic for the first time in the summer of 2015 to tour the clinic and ask questions from Dr. Addington about how Dr. Blair ran his clinic. They became great friends, and the two Doctors would talk on the phone for hours.
Dr. Elder traveled with Dr. Addington to Davenport to see an extremities expert.
Ruth and Gordon go on a road trip to Lubbock in July of 2017 to explore taking over the Blair Chiropractic Clinic with the intention of saying no. While there were many reasons why it seemed like a bad idea, it became clear to both of them that this is their purpose.
The process of building the clinic back up has meant being involved in the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, referral networks, and lots of meetings with other Doctors.
Interview with Dr. Ben Edwards August 27, 2018: https://veritasmedical.com/podcast/
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, welcome, welcome to What Pain in the Neck, the podcast. I am Ruth Elder, your host, and this episode today is actually part two of our story. By ours, I mean myself, Ruth Elder, and my husband's story. You may choose to go back and listen to part one on February 2nd on this podcast that tells the story of how we met, what got us into chiropractic, our journey of becoming specialists, and my husband's strive to always excel and find better mentors and learn. This today is part two. Gordon, welcome. Thank you for taking the time to be on my show.
Well, you're a pretty cute hostess. I couldn't help but be on here.
All right. Our story from February 2nd, we ended in talking about how you had always wanted to seek out mentors and how that journey led you to come and visit Lubbock to find out how Dr. Blair ran his clinic. Why don't you pick up the story from there? When you came to Lubbock which is where we are now, you've been practicing here since January of 2018.
Right.
Do you remember when you came to Lubbock the first time? Why don't you tell when that was and what happened during that visit?
I'm not 100% sure but I think it was 2015. I think it might have been the summer of 2015. I had a friend who was visiting the States and he was going to be in Dallas. I wanted to spend some time with him, and because Lubbock is relatively close to Dallas compared to where I was in California, I wanted to take a side trip and take that opportunity to visit the original Blair Clinic and visit with Dr. Addington, who was the director at the time. I never did meet Dr. Blair. He passed away in the early to mid-'80s. I had two reasons for visiting.
One was to see the Blair Clinic and to hear from Dr. Addington how Dr. Blair treated his patients in the sense of, did he check them twice a week for six months. Just little details like that. Just things that weren't technique-related but more just practice related. I was interested in that. Then also, I had heard that Dr. Addington had developed some ancillary technique, some extra technique that was related to taking care of the rest of the body without messing up what we were doing in the neck which was always my fear with my patients.
In fact, it was the opposite. It helped the neck hold better.
Well, that's what I found out and that is certainly my suspicion. I haven't done the research or I haven't taken the statistics yet on my own practice since I've changed. Primarily, we do Blair and if there was only one thing I would do, it would be take care of the upper neck. More and more, we are also looking at the other errors of complaint and seeing if there's something there that is irritating the nervous system that should be corrected so that it doesn't put more stress into the neck. The longer the neck holds, the better chance we have of being healthy.
You went straight from telling the story of what happened to what you have learned now this many years later and that's okay. That's what has a long-term come from that. Can you go back to the story?
Right, right. I wanted to see Dr. Addington. I wanted to talk to him about Dr. Blair and how he practiced but I also wanted to find out a little bit more about what he had learned himself and how he was practicing Dr. Addington, the director. I had met Dr. Addington before at some conferences, but never really taken the time to speak with him but he remembered. He had an amazing memory. I was really impressed with his memory. Even as I got to know him better, he would remember patients and cases, names and dates.
He would even remember what their misalignments were for patients that he hadn't seen for 20 years.
Right. It was amazing.
I visualize it, I think, in his brain and still remember it.
He greeted me almost like an old friend and I was surprised because I didn't even know if he would remember who I was. I had been a minor figure in the Blair Society in the society that runs to the Blair technique around the world. We struck a pretty good friendship. I guess I could say I fell in love with him. He became very much a father figure or a favorite uncle or something along those lines. He was actually crippled. He had almost no feeling in his hands and he had broken his back a couple of times. He was on a walker, moved very slow, and he was still practicing.
That really touched me. That moved me. He didn't need to practice financially but it was his love for the technique and the people and that there was nobody else around here that could do what he could do.
The dedication to the legacy that Dr. Blair started.
Right. He didn't want to close the Blair Clinic. He had several chiropractors come and practice with him for a while and for various reasons, they didn't work out. He really wanted me to come and I said no.
Yes, and then you came home and telling me about that. Well, I just laughed about it. [laughs]
We were like, "Okay, we've got our clinic in California. It was small but we were paying the bills and feeding the kids." It was in California and we loved living in California.
Yes, that's your hometown, our kids' hometown. It was sunny all the time and we had friends and that really was home. Just the thought of starting over just was not something either one of us were interested in.
It was hard enough I think building that first practice. I felt like I never wanted to try to build another practice again and moving to Lubbock would've meant rebuilding in some sense. It would've been easier in many senses. Just the same as building a new practice.
Then add to that uprooting our family, to me, that was just the out-of-the-question question. After that visit, you and Dr. Addington would talk on the phone.
Well, I still think he was much smarter than I am, but our interests were so similar. It was the Blair technique and the mechanics, and it's things that I still just get excited about. How does it work and what's a better way to do it maybe or some theories or how can we test these?
You would talk for hours and hours.
Right. A couple of times a month, I think. At least once a month, maybe a couple of times a month.
I think it was more than once a month.
He would usually end the phone call with something along the lines of, when are you going to come and take over the Blair Clinic?
You would say?
I'm not going to do it.
Then yet, here we are. What happened?
Well, one of the things-- let me talk about the trip to Davenport. Would that be good at this point?
Yes.
That was key. When I was visiting him that first time in 2015 I think, because of his health condition, he really wanted to see, he had met and been treated by an extremities chiropractor out of Davenport, a man who taught, and he had come here--
Extremities, meaning hands and feet.
Hands, feet, legs, hips, shoulders. He had come and taught here in Lubbock at an annual conference for Texas chiropractors. They had become friends and he had invited Dr. Addington to come and he would take care of him at his clinic in Davenport, Iowa. Dr. Addington really had no way to get there. He couldn't sit long enough to even be in an airplane, drive. He was in pain all the time and really the only position he had that gave him some relief was laying down. He couldn't stay laying down all the time either. He just had lots of problems.
There was no way he was going to be able to get there unless somebody took him. What I offered, I said, "Look, you arranged things, I'll drive you." He arranged, he rented a van, had a commuter van, had the rear seats taken out so we could put a mattress back there.
I think it's important to note that this was, I think it was July or was sometime during the summer. I think it might have been the 4th of July week actually.
It was. I was in Davenport on the 4th of July, whatever year that was.
Here you are in private practice in Southern California ---------------------------------- Part 2 (00:10:00 - 00:20:00) - DO NOT DELETE THIS LINE. THIS LINE IS NOT VISIBLE TO CLIENT ----------------------------------and you take--
It must have been 10 days, 2 weeks.
Yes, and you close the clinic, left the kids and the family, and the fun that we could have had over the 4th of July weekend, and flew to Lubbock, and then drove this van round trip to Iowa, and then flew back to California.
Right. It was interesting because obviously, I got to observe the treatments by this world-renowned extremity expert, chiropractic arms, everything other than the spine. He was treating that too, but his expertise laid more in the shoulders, legs, and arms. I got excited because it was quality stuff, and I thought, "I'd like to learn this too." That was also part of what Dr. Addington had been doing for his patients. It's just that he didn't have somebody that could do it for him.
Yes, you know what they say about a doctor who tries to treat himself?
Fool for a doctor and a fool for a patient.
Yes, that's right. I think that story is important because it says something about, at this point, you said he was more like a favorite uncle, but you were almost more like a son to him as well.
I felt like that from-- that kind of grew that feeling.
I think it was one year after that, you came to me and sat me down.
I don't remember. I think it might have been a couple of years because it was in 2017, wasn't it?
Yes.
It was in the summer of 2017, we decided that we needed to explore the opportunity. We figured we probably would say no.
What you said was, "I think you need to come with me. We need to do a road trip, and it needs to be a road trip so that we'll have lots of time to think and talk and go to Lubbock and find out." Once and for all that you said, "I don't want to get to the end of my life and wonder what if?"
There was the prestige of running the Blair Clinic, such as that, which wasn't enough to tempt me. It was more learning from Dr. Addington. Then in our hometown, in Lancaster, there was three chiropractic offices that practiced the Blair technique.
In one town.
In that one town. Here, there was Dr. Addington in Lubbock. Then there's a friend of mine in Dallas who practices Blair. Then you'd have to go to, I don't know--
Oklahoma.
It was hundreds of square miles where there was nobody.
I think we figured out it would be at least 300 miles radius where there's no Blair chiropractor in all directions.
Now, there's more, but then it was even worse.
Some directions, it's even more.
We drove cross country. We got here on a Friday afternoon and observed him taking care of some patients.
And a cat?
Then the next day, we had an appointment with a real estate agent just so that we could get the data on what it would take to buy a home or what the housing market was like. Then we spent the afternoon with Dr. Addington in his home. I think on Friday night, we were both pretty discouraged.
We were discouraged and tired. We had a long list of reasons why it would be a really terrible idea to come to Lubbock and why it would be difficult. We felt like a heavy burden on that. It's like, "No, why would we do that?"
Then by Saturday night, none of those reasons changed.
On that Saturday, we had met with a real estate agent. You had had some of your science-y discussions with Dr. Addington. I had been out and explored some of the towns and gyms, which is what I love to do. Then we had dinner with some of Dr. Blair's family that night with Dianne Madison who's Dr. Blair's daughter. You can go and listen to her story on one of the episodes here on the show and Cameron her son.
Dr. Blair's grandson. That was very pleasant. It was good.
One of the things, I think I said this in the episode with Dianne but she was talking about her and her sister's dedication to furthering their father's work and their dedication to the Blair technique and the Blair Clinic. She, during that dinner, told us about several things that she was always praying for. Then those were the same things that we were praying for.
By that evening, as we were sitting in our Airbnb, we both didn't want to-- I don't think we wanted to admit it to each other or we're a little anxious that both of us had changed our minds independently before we had talked to each other. That we thought that this was something that we really wanted and needed to do, despite the fact that all the reasons not to do it.
Yes, none of those things had changed. The way the process actually happened in me, maybe it's okay if I tell my side of it.
Absolutely.
What I felt like is all of those reasons why it would be difficult and the least of which was uprooting the family and there were many others, too. All of those things were still there. I still felt that burden. If you haven't listened to part one, go back and listen to our story there. Because what happened to me was I had-- it was like my whole life went, in fast track, through my brain and how my sickness and being trained by Dr. Muncy and you're being almost chosen to continue the legacy by Dr. Muncy and all the different things that happened. It just all came together.
In a lightning flash years' worth of our story came together in my brain, and I felt like, "This is our purpose. This is why these things have happened. This is what we must do so that we can continue to help more people. This is the next step in our journey."
We traveled halfway back across the United States, home to California, and that was in July of 2017, and we arrived back in Lubbock with all our stuff by Thanksgiving of that same year. I think it was the beginning of November.
Thinking back on it, that's a crazy fast timeline. Remember we had--
That's how we did it. We sold the house.
Yes, we sold the house. We closed down your clinic there, and made sure that all the patients had another doctor to go to. Your mother and grandmother lived with us. We found them a house, and we found a house here in Lubbock. It was intense.
Yes. Probably all my gray hair came from that.
Yes, we definitely have more of those during that period. Do you want to talk about what the first few months in Lubbock was like?
I didn't take over the clinic until January 1st of 2018. Gave Dr. Addington time to wind down his part and time for me to pick up the grains gradually. I was there every day.
I think also, legally, as an owner, he wanted to shut it all down at the end of one year and have you take over 100% the new year, which made sense from a business point of view, accounting, and all of that stuff.
I must have spent some time every day of the week, either at the clinic or at his house in hours. We're not talking 45 minutes.
It was days. [crosstalk]
Obviously, every moment that he was open, I was at the clinic but anytime he wasn't open, often I would be at his house, taking care of him, giving him treatments, and having him teach me the things that he had learned over a lifetime and from some of his mentors, who were some pretty famous people in the field. He had been on the faculty at both Palmer Chiropractic College, which was the original Chiropractic College, as well as Texas College of Chiropractic in Houston. During that time, he had learned some of the most intricate techniques from the people who actually had developed them. Dr. Gillet, who developed Gillet motion palpation, the other upper cervical techniques, the different men who were instrumental in those, as well as some of the other full spine obviously the full spine techniques. He really knew-- what's that saying? He's forgotten more than I'll ever know. I don't know if that's true or not, but he knew an immense amount. With his memory and his ability to think, those are two things. You can appear smart if you just remember a lot but intelligence is more than just remembering things and regurgitating things.
It's being able to think about those things and to manipulate them in your mind and come up with new conclusions or your own thoughts, and he was good at both of those.
Yes, but I think it's important to note how dedicated he still was to being true to the Blair technique. That was all. Everything else went through that grid.
When he first heard about the Blair technique and then he arranged to meet Dr. Blair and talk about it and some other Blair doctors. He thought he had found the Holy, I was going to say the Holy Grail, but he found the absolute best and he'd already been trained, like I said, in the other upper cervical techniques and regular chiropractic. He felt he had found the best way possible to treat the neck. He felt that way until he died.
To the day that he passed away, you would still go and see him hours every week in addition to building up the Blair Clinic and running it. At the time, it really wasn't sustainable from a business point of view and it was just a tremendous amount of work building that up. Do you want to talk about a little bit how that process went and how we went about doing that?
You actually probably have a better grasp or memory on that. What I remember is that there was only a few patients and a few active files. Only a few people who were the same--
Yes, we had 13 names on our mailing list.
Pretty small. 13 in one day is not very much, and this was 13 total. We joined the chamber, we joined a referral group. We just looked for opportunities to get the word out. You're much better at that than I am. Just your type of personality and your brain, your mindset, and you just did a great job. You basically filled our practice.
Well, there's a little bit more to it than that. It's true that I did a lot to get the word out, but also, you were invited to be a guest at a radio show here in town and that really helped a lot. That also started not just getting the word out, but it started a friendship with some doctors here in Lubbock.
Yes, it was a functional medicine doctor here in town, Dr. Ben Edwards. I think a patient had mentioned his name and asked if I'd heard about him, and I hadn't. I looked him up and asked to meet and we met and then he asked me to be on his radio show, which is still, I think, available as a podcast online.
I will try to find it and link to it actually, if I can find it.
I think this was still back in 2018, so fairly early on. He had a big following, so I started getting clients, not only that he referred but also people that had heard me and thought maybe this would be good for them.
Also, in the middle of all of it, we came here wanting to continue, obviously Dr. Blair's work, and also continue in his clinic that he built. Why don't you describe what it was like to work in that clinic and what the state of it was? We actually had a box of, I think, a thousand magazines that was talking about this state-of-the-art modern clinic that was just built in Lubbock, Texas. It even had air conditioning.
Yes.
And the X-ray machine, but that was 1955 and we came in 2018.
Yes, and it was not in such good shape anymore. I believe the design of the building, and I'm no architect, but the design of the building wasn't really suitable for West Texas, for the environment here. Anyway, suffice to say that it smelled like mildew.
We get a lot of storms here in West Texas and the roof was not up to it.
It did smell bad inside. Mostly, the electricity wasn't good. It was in a bad part of town. Now, it had been a good part of town when it was built, but again, 1950s versus 2018. When I hooked up my laser printer whenever we went to print something, all the lights would flicker. It was a really weird feeling because it was awe at being in this building that Dr. Blair had designed himself. Obviously, had an architect do it.
He was extremely proud of it.
He had designed it, figured out the layout and the materials, and all these things. History was just oozing out of it, but unfortunately, there were some funky smells oozing out of it too.
We fondly refer to it as the museum.
It would have been so awesome to be able to invest in that building and refurbish it, but it wouldn't have changed where it was in town. At that time, we were really focused on the clinical work. We needed to get that up and running because our money from the sale of the house and all of that was going to run out. We had no money to invest in the building and we needed people to feel comfortable coming to the building. We ended up moving. We never bought it. We were renting it from the Blair family and they ended up when we told them we weren't going to be able to refurbish it and buy it, then they sold it.
I think we kind of made that decision with them. We had come up with a list and had an expert, we had what's it called a building inspection done and the list of things that needed to be done. We went over that with the Blair family and together we decided that really, Dr. Blair's legacy is the clinical work, how much it helps people.
Not so much the building. It was something I'm still a little sad about today, but we had to give that building up and move out.
We actually moved two times after that.
Yes, not by plan.
We ended up actually renting from-- well, there was some organization here in Lubbock that was the biggest fraud case in Lubbock history, I think.
Basically, there was some issues and the building stopped. It never got fully refurbished. We were the only people that moved in. We had the prime spot. We had a sweet spot and it had been built out for us very nicely. It was fairly small and expensive. Then the building stopped being taken care of and started falling apart again and we just had to move.
To set this in perspective, everybody that we were dealing with in this company are now in federal prison for fraud.
Yes, they got sentenced and some of them are out already. One of our patients who had heard about us from Dr. Ben's radio show, he had a space and he really one of his passions was taking care of his employees. He runs a factory. One of the things his passion was, was to take care of his employee's health, food, those kind of things. He offered us a space in an industrial part of town, which was larger than we needed to move into. We gratefully accepted and have been here ever since.
It's interesting we moved into a larger space and I thought it was ridiculously large, but now, we're growing and we're growing into it.
We may need more space, but right now, we haven't quite moved into everything we've got available to us.
But pretty close.
We're getting there.
Gordon, what I think it boils down to is that Dr. Blair really discovered some great ways to help more people more of the time with a lot less adjusting. Building on that legacy, we really see some incredible stories. People get better. Right now, we've seen some networks of people that refer to us. We have patients that are getting better and are excited and telling their friends. I think bottom line is the reason we moved here to continue Dr. Blair's legacy is working.
Right. Yes, I'm happy and I'm a little awestruck that I get to be a part of it.
It's humbling to me that probably almost 50% of our patient base travel two hours or more to come here to get this kind of care. I just can't imagine if the clinic had to close down. This wouldn't have been available in West Texas. I think that is really the main reward of the hard work that we've done and moving, and it hasn't been easy. Especially through the pandemic and all the things that have come with that and all the moves but here we are helping people, just like Dr. Blair did. I actually want to close this ---------------------------------- Part 4 (00:30:00 - 00:31:50) - DO NOT DELETE THIS LINE. THIS LINE IS NOT VISIBLE TO CLIENT ----------------------------------episode out.
I have a yellow brochure here that Dr. Blair had printed for the Blair Clinic. I'm pretty sure I can trace it back to 1950. On the back page, it said, "Could it be that you are suffering needlessly? Regardless of your condition, come in, talk with us, see if we can help." That legacy is still continuing today. You'll see on our website, it says, "Are you suffering needlessly?" If you have any questions, give us a call, or come in and talk to us, and we'll see if we can help.
Right. We don't know everything, and we don't treat diseases particularly, but we know a lot and we know a lot about how the body treats diseases. That's really our focus is more on helping you heal yourself, looking for the mechanical problems that are causing nerve problems that are keeping you from healing yourself and fixing those in the places where they're the most likely to happen. That's what gets me excited.
We will do another episode soon about that. This has been in-depth about our personal journey, and pretty soon, stay tuned and find out some of the stories of people that we see day-to-day that are true stories that help motivate us and are typical results of what we see day-to-day here.
Yes.