Every year, we have a chance to express ourselves to those we love in a very personal and meaningful way. Here are some of the thoughts of the great lovers throughout history.

How Do I Love Thee
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine! 
~Thomas Hood

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction. 
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. 
~Albert Einstein

For you see, each day I love you more Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard

Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
~Author Unknown

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into
your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip. 
 ~Jonathan Carroll, “Outside the Dog Museum”

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. 
~William Shakespeare

kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
~e.e. cummings
 
Who, being loved, is poor? 
~Oscar Wilde
 
Grow old with me!  The best is yet to be. 
~Robert Browning

We loved with a love that was more than love. 
~Edgar Allan Poe
 
Love is a game that two can play and both win. 
~Eva Gabor

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 
~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. 
~Plato

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. 
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

How did it happen that their lips came together?  How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds,
that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill?  A kiss, and all was said. 
~Victor Hugo

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. 
~Robert Frost

Love is the poetry of the senses. 
~Honoré de Balzac

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words. 
~William Shakespeare

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. 
~Voltaire

An extremely biased, relatively insignificant study was published last week in the journal Neurology about how neck manipulations are supposed to increase the risk of strokes in some people.  The article was in the Macon paper, and a friend asked if I had seen it.  I had not, and asked him what it said.  He told me, and I brushed it off as nothing.  Chiropractors are accustomed to defending our work, and I assumed that everyone already knows that.  Three patients of ours, however, saw the article too and asked if I would explain what it was about and how chiropractic is safe.  I don’t love writing defensively, but I will attempt to shed more accurate light on the whole issue of the bias against chiropractors and the truth about neck manipulations.

Chiropractors offer drug-free, cost-effective conservative care that assures nervous system health.  It is exceptionally effective for lower back troubles, neck troubles, and headaches in addition.  According to Dr. Terry Rondberg, president of the World Chiropractic Alliance, “Millions of people are turning to chiropractic for their health and wellness care.  That’s millions of dollars that won’t go for risky medical treatment or expensive drugs.  The medical and drug industries have a strong incentive to scare people away from chiropractic.”  A person can be seen in my office for an entire year for about the same amount as it costs for a single MRI.  Natural remedies that can do as effective a job as many pharmaceuticals are cheap and offer no built-in profit for big conglomerates.  It is all about money.  In 1990 in Wilk vs. AMA, the American Medical Association was found guilty of conspiring with other medical organizations in a “lengthy, systematic, successful, and unlawful boycott” designed to eliminate chiropractic as a competitor.  Since the AMA cannot directly launch an all-out assault on chiropractors anymore, the assault comes in the form of media exaggeration of a comparatively small issue.  The media has an interest because, according to Dr. Rondberg, “Drug companies and other medical firms spend more than 3 billion dollars yearly to fill newspaper and magazine pages, saturate radio and television airwaves, and blanket the Internet with ads.”

 The paper published last week involved 51 stroke victims who had had neck manipulations in the same time frame as their strokes occurred.  This could mean the same week, day, or month.  “Just because there was a temporal relationship between the events does not mean that one caused the other,” said chiropractic researcher Dr. Christopher Kent.  The media also failed to distinguish the difference between neck manipulations and chiropractic adjustments.  Some of the manipulations performed by medical doctors, physiotherapists, and osteopaths were incorrectly blamed on chiropractors.  Numerous prior studies, some involving thousands of patients, directly contradict the findings of the study which was published last week.  In fact, chiropractors have the lowest malpractice premiums in the healthcare profession.  This is an indication of the safety of chiropractic procedures.  If it were so unsafe, the premiums would be outrageous to protect the public from all of the risk.  According to the April, 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association, medical treatment and drug errors account for more than 100,000 deaths per year with another 350,000 adverse drug interactions, many of which are fatal, in nursing homes. This is why many medical doctors are leaving practice, limiting their practices, or eliminating surgical procedures. Malpractice insurance rates are correlated with the amount of risk a practitioner poses to the public.

I do not want to appear to be anti-medical.  I am not.  I do get frustrated when my profession is misrepresented.  We are highly skilled, well-trained doctors.  We know when something is out of our scope of practice, and when to refer to someone who knows more than we do about one condition or another.  The first part of our oath as doctors is, “First, do no harm.”  We also remember that the word “doctor” in Latin means “teacher”.  We take the time to teach our patients about their conditions rather than dictate to them their treatments.  We have tests which are specifically for determining a patient’s risk of having a cerebrovascular incident, or stroke.  We have specialized cervical techniques which target specific areas of the spine and were developed to reduce patients’ risk.  I know that chiropractic won’t heal everything from skin cancer to hemorrhoids, but I also know that if my nervous system is free of interference caused by vertebral subluxations my body has a greater chance of healing and recovering from a host of ailments.  I love what I do.  I love those that I serve, and by the grace of God I will continue to defend the merits of chiropractic until my job on this earth is done.  Treat your body well.

Those of you who know me can attest to the fact that I am not a paranoid person.  I do not feel that the world is out to get me, and I am not suffering from terribly low self-esteem.  I without reserve can say that I adore my calling.  I cannot imagine doing anything else.  If I won the lottery I would still be a chiropractor.  I also make every effort not to judge others until they prove to me that there is a reason to do so.  I give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  In a Utopia, others would offer me the same courtesies.  Let me tell you that this is not Utopia.  I have had to endure the sneers of medical doctors whose patients I see time after time but only when I worked in Savannah did any of them acknowledge the good that was done for patients by chiropractors.  Physical therapists seem to feel a need to knock what we do also.  Do not judge so quickly.

In a recent article published be the American Academy of Spine Physicians, a positive patient outcome was reported and a chiropractor forged a friendship with the medical doctor of one of his patients.  I have chosen to share this article with the hope of opening some eyes.  It is entitled “Good Results Speak Loudly”.

“A 51-year-old male had developed low back pain with radiation down his left leg…Initially the pain was intermittent but then became constant.  The patient’s family doctor placed him on muscle relaxants and analgesics (pain medication).  This helped but did not alleviate his condition.  The doctor ordered lumbar spine x-rays, which showed degenerative changes…The patient was referred to a neurosurgeon who found no weakness or sensory deficit.  He placed the patient on two weeks of bed rest, which resulted in little improvement.  When the neurosurgeon saw the patient at follow-up, he recommended more bed rest.  Because the patient had not benefited much from the previous course of bed rest, he asked the neurosurgeon for a referral to a chiropractic physician.  The neurosurgeon was upset.  He said he knew nothing about chiropractors and chiropractic treatment, and recommended that the patient not go to a chiropractor.  Several years prior, a friend of the patient had a similar problem treated successfully by a chiropractor and the patient got the name of his friend’s chiropractor.  He then made an appointment and requested his x-rays from the neurosurgeon.  The neurosurgeon would not give him his x-rays “to take to a chiropractor”.  The patient went anyway.  The chiropractor examined him, repeated the lumbar x-rays, and began therapy.  Within two weeks, the radiating leg pain was gone; by the end of the month, the patient had no lower back pain.  Enthusiastic about his result, the patient returned to the neurosurgeon who was impressed with what the chiropractor was able to do.  He contacted the chiropractor and the two met to discuss chiropractic manipulative therapy.  One week later, the neurosurgeon visited the chiropractor’s office to observe various types of treatment. From that time on, the two doctors referred patients to each other and enjoyed the results of cooperative spine care.  They both benefited as did their patients.”

There is no reason in this world that this cannot be the case here.  I hereby extend an open invitation to any physician or physical therapist in this town who would be willing to come in to our office and observe what we do.  Make your judgments based on your own education and not based on hearsay.  Find out for yourself, first hand, why and how chiropractic works.  I am not seeking acceptance per se, but I am offering a chance to teach other doctors and health professionals what we do and why it works.  I would love nothing more than to have doctors who would work in cooperation with us in offering the best possible options for our patients.  I personally believe that if I cannot provide what my patients are in need of I will go to any extreme necessary in order to find it for them.  I do and have.  Many of my patients have gone to Columbus, Macon, and Atlanta to find physicians who are willing to accept referrals from a caring, responsible, and informed chiropractor.  I chose to be a chiropractor for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with having a hostile relationship with any other professional.  From the standpoint of consumer, if my doctor would not be open-minded enough to explore all of the possible options that might benefit me I think I would run, not walk, in the direction of one who would.  Keep your focus on what matters most.  Treat your body well.