I’m sharing some life experience hoping that it will make your experience of life a little more hopeful and pleasant.
Most people don’t think about a chiropractor when thinking about an emergency. I don’t blame you. If I ended up going through the windshield of a car I certainly wouldn’t be thinking of going to me especially since some of me might be on the road.
But for low back pain that is so severe that I refer to it as a “Back Attack”, you might want to change your opinion on chiropractic and an emergency.
You could go to an emergency room, but they don’t see you as an emergency like you are feeling at that moment. It is as painful as a heart attack, but it is not serious to them as in it is more likely that it is not life threatening. That means you are probably going to sit there for a very long time and spend a lot of it trying not to get sneezed on by some people that may not have bathed for quite awhile. Yes I am saying that going to the E.R. is not a pleasant experience.
However, it is about to get worse. You finally get to be seen. But by who? A nurse practitioner? A physician’s assistant? Maybe you will get a doctor. But perhaps that doctor’s specialty is ears, nose, and throat. Whoever you wind up with could more likely than not, know almost as little about back pain as you do, except you actually understand it better at that moment because you are in its brutal grip. Maybe you will be given an anti-inflammatory medication that could actually be of some benefit. Or given Tylenol, which is usually of no benefit and you could have just walked to your medicine cabinet for that as well as the anti inflammatory.
If you are screaming at the top of your lungs you may receive Tylenol with a little bit of narcotic that could be big enough to destroy your life. You may have heard about the medical induced opioid epidemic. The number one reason for a prescription of opioids is low back pain. Medical doctors prescribe it because they are convinced that nothing else works. More likely than not, they have never referred a patient to a chiropractor. On the other hand some of my patients are so bad that I do have to refer them for strong medicines or even surgery. In decades of practice, I’ve sent 4 or 5 patients for surgery. The odds are very low you need it.
Your average face to face time with the doctor could be less than 5 minutes although your time there could be 8 hours. Your bill most likely will be over a thousand dollars.
There is a better way, a different way and it is called Chiropractic. In a situation described above, you may not even be able to get out of bed and that is why I come to where you are suffering. I’m positive your experience with me will be a lot better than the additional suffering you can plan on experiencing at the E.R. if you could even get there since so many patients I see can’t get off the floor. Statistically, the chances that your acute severe back or neck pain requires an emergency room are low. However, as I said above, there have been a few patients that I had to send there because they did have a serious condition or their pain just did not significantly respond to chiropractic methods. Most back pain does respond amazingly well versus the alternative’s statistical results. Ironically, the patients that are in need of medical attention usually don’t want to have it. Injections are considered a successful treatment if they relieve the pain for two months. Patients don’t feel that was a great success.
So who are you going to call? These types of cases are indeed, complex and difficult. Most chiropractors do not want to take a call like these because they don’t have the experience necessary to get desirable results. It is difficult work and many of my colleagues are not prepared for the challenge. Some are literally scared of these cases. It is not easy to work on someone that could be screaming in agony.
My typical patient that was on the floor, unable to get to the bathroom is able to stand up after treatment and relieve themselves, which is a big deal because a full bladder can lead to nephritis and that is a real medical emergency. These typical cases generally report a 30% improvement after one treatment. 30% might not sound like much to you, but if I was to get that result in a hospital emergency room, news trucks would be there to report a new miracle cure. This is not a cure, but it is an amazing start.
I am an on call, on site, mobile chiropractor for the Los Angeles region. Check my website for contact information.
