My experience with chiropractic began early in my junior season playing collegiate basketball for the Benedictine Lady Ravens. I developed severe low back pain that was keeping me from performing at my best. There came a point where I wasn’t even able to sprint the length of the court or jump for a rebound due to the severity of my pain. Ibuprofen was not working. I was taking 4-5 ibuprofen a day with no relief.
After a couple of weeks, my husband suggested I go see his chiropractor. At that point, all I knew about chiropractors was that they popped your neck and that made me nervous! Eventually, the pain became too much to bear and I decided to give his chiropractor a try. He used a technique called Activator, which is an instrument-assisted form of chiropractic with no pops or cracks! After three treatments with this doctor, I was pain free and on the court, I went on to have the best season of my career! I couldn’t believe this treatment had helped me become pain free without the use of medications or invasive techniques! It was all-natural and I had finally found a doctor who saw me as more than just a low back problem; he saw me as a whole person. Shortly thereafter, I decided to become a chiropractor, forever focused on wellness care rather than sickness care.
I attended Cleveland Chiropractic College – Kansas City and immediately became active in as many extracurricular activities I could handle given the intense load of schoolwork. In my time at Cleveland, I was the school’s chapter president of the Student American Black Chiropractic Association, a class representative, a Multi-cultural Student Advocate, a Campus Ambassador Student Recruiter, and an active member of several clubs on campus including Student American Chiropractic Association, Family Wellness / Pediatric Club, Activator Club, Acupuncture Club, and Motion Palpation Institute Club. I also had the privilege, two out of the three years that I attended school, to visit Washington, D.C. to meet with senators and legislators on capital hill for the progress of chiropractic in health care during the National Chiropractic Legislative Conference.
My interest in acupuncture developed while enrolled in chiropractic school. After hearing of several positive experiences from my several of my peers, I decided I would take a few of the acupuncture seminars available through school in order to experience this form of health care for myself. I attended a few of the seminars and still, I remained skeptical. Finally, that “ah ha” moment hit me. All through high school and college sports, I suffered from painful tendinitis in both of my shoulders. The day before one of these acupuncture seminars I suffered through the single most painful day of shoulder pain that I have ever experienced. On a scale from 0 to 10, 0 being no pain at all and 10 being the need to go to the ER, my shoulder pain was at an 8. Had the pain lasted much longer, I was seriously considering going to head to the ER. By the following morning, my pain had come down to a 5 or 6 as I walked into the acupuncture seminar.
As I was sitting in the classroom that day, another flare up in my tendonitis caused my shoulder pain to shoot back up to a 7/10. A classmate then put a couple of needles in two specific acupuncture points in my leg and immediately my pain went down to a 3/10. I had her take one of the needles out to see what would happen, and the pain shot back up to a 7/10. We asked our instructor what we should do next and he told us to put the needle back where it was. As soon as she inserted the needle, my pain disappeared and I have only had a few episodes of pain since.