Pearls of Wisdom - Pure & Powerful. Dr. Liz Anderson Peacock
to my immune system? My nervous system? And my ability to adapt to stress or foreign activity?
I remember as a young child lying awake at night thinking – this just can’t be right! Who would want to live like this? Thankfully my mother was an open-minded woman and listened to a friend of ours who worked for a Chiropractor. Her friend said a few other patients with headaches had great relief and suggested we give it a try.
I went to be adjusted and within a couple of months the migraines were diminishing both in frequency and intensity. I remember thinking how wonderful it was to have a change in symptoms without any medications, even when told by other doctors I would grow out of needing them.
In the case of my mother, she suffered for years with chronic lower back issues due to a compression injury. With this, she gave birth spontaneously at seven months gestation to her third child, a premature son (my brother). My mother had an emergency hysterectomy following his birth, and he spent most of his first year of life in the hospital with a re-occurring collapsed lung. A fluke, a coincidence? I think not!
My mother wore a back brace for many years following her injury and surgery until she tried Chiropractic. Could her injury have disempowered her nervous system function?
I look back in my life and wonder about these things. When I was in the fourth grade, a very close family friend’s son died of leukemia at the age of six. Apart from being so sad watching their family suffer, I remember again wondering what causes the body to become diseased? Why do some people just stop adapting and WHY can’t they overcome it? Does the attack of a foreign substance cause the body to have a complete melt down? Did something happen to this child when he was given his shots? Did he have trauma at birth? He wasn’t born that way! Why at the age of two? WHY-WHY-WHY? I cried myself to sleep feeling pain for his family, for our family, but mostly for him.
This boy was a very spiritual being; he knew things most people his age would never understand or know. He understood love; he understood relationships; and he understood pain. He knew he was put on earth to teach people to experience love, even for a brief moment, and to let go of our fears of living. I remember standing in the schoolyard when he went into the hospital for the last time. I stood thinking that it was now time to grow up. I had to be smart and I had to make something of myself. I felt his death wasn’t fair and it fueled me with desire to figure out why things like this occur.
Well, I still haven’t figured it out. But I do know these events in my life instilled a passion deep within me – a passion so strong, I don’t even fully comprehend it. These events put me on the quest to not only understand the human body, but the human mind and the relationship of the two. Why has been one of my favorite questions.
I can’t say for sure if just one thing made me want to become a Chiropractor, but I am certain I was being strongly pulled in its direction. For these reasons as well as many others along the way, I continue to be a very passionate Chiropractor. Admittedly, I sometimes lose my way, but always seem to be thrown back in the direction of vitalistic energy and purity. I know Chiropractic can’t help everything, but it certainly can’t hurt to try!
As a base, let’s recall Chiropractic Principle #4, The Triune of Life – “Life is a triunity having three necessary united factors, namely, Intelligence, Force and Matter.” I used to think Chiropractors could save the world, and the hardest lesson for me to learn was Chiropractic Principle #24, The Limits of Adaptation – “Innate Intelligence adapts forces and matter for the body as long as it can do so without breaking a Universal Law, or is limited by the limitations of matter.” I always wanted to believe that if the forces of intelligence were present, the matter could always improve. Instead, I realize I have to accept there are limits.
However, removing interferences in the body to relieve the nerve interference is paramount for proper function – no matter what. With this understanding in mind, the most amazing things have come before my eyes, most certainly because of my confidence in adjusting children and babies. My thanks and appreciation to Larry Webster my mentor – God rest his soul. Also, I know I had guidance from my little friend in heaven.
Changing One Life At A Time
An eighteen-month old child had not yet in his life slept through a night. A healthy sleep pattern for this age is about eleven hours of solid sleep at night, with two or three hours of napping during the days. He was sick about 80 percent of the time with colds, congestion and earaches. No one could figure out why he was always sick. Supposedly his birth was normal, though I was not there to witness it. He was nursed until the age of fourteen months. His family had a fairly good understanding of nutrition and made several different attempts to correct his issues with a modified diet. They didn’t want to use another course of antibiotics, because it did not resolve the problem.
Not by any means were they strung at their last hope, but the mother was literally exhausted and didn’t know where else to turn. Thus far, everything they had tried did not improve her infant’s condition. Alas, they were referred to our office by one of her close friends.
I remember seeing this child and thinking what a miserable existence he must have been enduring. He could not communicate what was wrong, could not begin to know how to fix it or how to even help himself in anyway. During his examination, I felt an incredible stress inside. Most likely because I placed myself in the shoes of his mother, wondering how she managed seeing him in his condition – and I had only been with him for forty-five minutes.
In the examination most everything appeared normal, except for a distended stomach, discomfort upon palpation of the lower left abdominal quadrant, and a diminished pupillary response reflex. Then, when I palpated the boys’ cervical spine, the lateral mass of C1 was extremely prominent to the left. I had never felt anything like it before in my life! It was palpable, and stuck out so far it felt like you could hang a hat on it. I will never forget the feeling – so unreal it made me nauseous. Without saying a word, I rechecked his pupillary responses, as I thought, “This poor child!”
I had adjusted children and newborns before, but I knew something was seriously wrong with this baby. I knew I needed to pull myself together in order to adjust this child. I excused myself from the exam room, went into my office and looked at my very favorite picture on pages 171 and 172 of the book The Subluxation Specific – The Adjustment Specific (Palmer). This picture served two purposes for me. One, to remind me of the devastating effects of subluxation; and two, to give me the guidance in adjusting this child to remove the nerve interference from his brainstem.
While my assistant held the boy, I escorted the parents to the report room to present a few charts explaining what I found to be going on with their son. I then proceeded to explain what I was going to do in light of the findings. I remember telling them, as far as I was concerned, the amount of stress being caused by this one vertebra was extremely overwhelming for their son, but I didn’t have any idea if removing it would help his condition. They were willing to give it a try; in fact, they were all for it.
We returned to the examination room, where he was fussing in the arms of my assistant. I was able to calm the child as taught by my mentor. I set up to adjust him, delivered one specific adjustment to correct the lateral atlas and left everything else alone. I told them he needed to be checked again the next day, and they went home.
That evening, I tried to reach the family to ask how everyone was doing. No answer, I was only able to reach their answering machine. I remember struggling through the night, hoping and praying he was okay with the adjustment. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I had concern with my own abilities as a Chiropractor. I settled my thoughts by imagining what my mentor would have done. Although this was not a devastating life or death situation, I think the severity of the subluxation caused me to question my abilities and the power of the body to heal.
The next morning, I was at my practice adjusting by 6:30 AM; they were scheduled to come in at 9:00 AM. However, they did not show! Our office procedure was to make calls about fifteen minutes after a missed appointment, but at 9:40 AM my staff came to me, pulling me aside to ask what they should do. Oddly enough, my staff did not want to call because they thought everyone might be sleeping. I suggested they wait and call around noon, crossing my fingers hoping they