Growing up, I had never been to a Chiropractor. I didn’t know what one was, didn’t have one in the family and had never thought I had the need to see one. When I was 15 years old, I had a severe back injury while Cheerleading. At the time, I was told that I would need surgery and that I had about an 85% chance of full recovery. Well, those weren’t great odds and I’m deathly afraid of surgery, so I just dealt with the pain. Shortly thereafter, my father met a Chiropractor, Dr. Gary, at the Health Club and they got to talking about my condition. Long story short, I became a chiropractic patient and avoided the surgery all together.
Now, up until this point….and actually for awhile after….I was dead set on being a doctor, which to me meant M.D. Since I was 4, I always told my parents that I was going to be a Doctor and Lawyer at the same time. I went to Undergrad and majored in Pre-Med, keeping that dream alive. I took a year off after undergrad to do Molecular Biology Research on Breast Cancer and luckily for me, lived with a Medical student. After a lot of conversations about where health care was going, I realized that my dream at 4 years old wasn’t going to be the same as I had envisioned.
I had always wanted to have a private practice and treat whole families. At the time I was applying, more and more private practices were being absorbed into hospitals and groups because of cost and insurance restrictions. I had a wonderful mentor who guided me into looking at other options. I remembered how great I was treated at Dr. Gary’s (in his private practice), so I did some research and the rest, as they say, is history.
I chose National University of Health Sciences, outside of Chicago, as it had the reputation for graduating “Medipractors”. Basically that meant that we were trained as primary care physicians that were doing Chiropractic. In order to get in, I had to have a Bachelors degree and while there, I obtained a second Bachelors and a Doctorate in Chiropractic. It’s 5 years of schooling that is condensed into an accelerated 3.5 years. During my last year, I also did a Masters Degree in Clinical Nutrition.
I am so lucky to absolutely love my job. I get to help people reach their goals everyday and genuinely enjoy coming to work. Thank you all for being a part of that!