WHAM… My heart sank to the floor as I felt liquid fire pouring down my legs… “What did you do?” I yelled in confusion…  

This is a true story that happened 18 years ago but let me start at the beginning. From the moment I could walk, I had this burning desire to become a doctor. Not just any doctor though - I wanted to be the kind that really helps people, that digs deep and finds the root cause of their problems. 

I was convinced this was my calling in life. So much so that I charged ahead to St. John's University on a pre-med track, ready to begin my journey. But then something happened that rocked my world. I started shadowing my mom, who's a psychiatric nurse practitioner, as she made her rounds at the hospital.

At first, it seemed like the perfect way to get some hands-on experience in the medical field. Boy, was I wrong...As I followed her from patient to patient, I realized these cold, sterile hospitals were more like factories than places of healing. It was all about stabilizing symptoms as quickly as possible, getting bodies in and out, making that dollar bill. Nobody seemed to truly care about finding the underlying reasons for people's suffering.

It was a harsh wake-up call.

I watched in horror as my mom's patients got pumped full of drugs and harsh treatments that merely covered up their issues instead of resolving them. All because it was the most "cost-effective" solution for the hospital's bottom line.

In that moment, staring at the hollow looks in those patient's eyes, I had an epiphany. This...this couldn't be what God wanted for me. There had to be a better way to help people outside of this soulless, money-grubbing system. So I switched gears after graduating and took a job at a dead-end collections agency, my dream of practicing medicine slowly withering away.

I was miserable, totally adrift and feeling like I had wasted years of my life. Until one day, my dad gave me the wake-up call I needed. He was sick of seeing me moping around and told me straight-up to stop squandering my biology degree. Well, unbeknownst to me, this man had done his homework. After researching high-paying jobs for biology majors, he came at me with three words that made me scoff:

"Be a chiropractor."

A chiropractor? You've got to be kidding me...My only experience with chiropractic up until that point were a few neck and back adjustments that provided temporary relief at best. I failed to see how aggressively cracking joints could be an actual solution for diagnosing and treating serious health issues.

But my dad was insistent, and wouldn't take no for an answer. As if the universe was on his side, a flier arrived that very week from Life University, advertising a new program for pre-med students to transition into their chiropractic program. Well, I figured I didn't have many options left at that point. What the heck, I'll give it a shot - I told myself.

Six months, if this doesn't work out, I'm gone. Those first few months at Life were...rough, to say the least. My skepticism about chiropractic as a legitimate form of healthcare was confirmed and then some. The curriculum seemed scattered and completely haphazard. "A bag of tricks" is how one instructor phrased it - as if we were magicians rather than doctors. Everything felt hokey and unscientific. I could practically smell the snake oil in the air.

To make matters worse, I was suffering from crippling knee pain and insomnia. My joints were so swollen and inflamed that I had to lie down in class or keep my legs straight out. It also didn't help that my shoulder was jacked up too - lifting my arm was agony. I'd beg to get adjusted by other students or professors, and they'd crank me around on those tables like I was a small truck's chassis. And sure, maybe I'd get some short-term relief. But inevitably, within hours, that deep, throbbing pain would come raging back.

I was at my wits end. Until one day, one of my buddies mentioned a "unique chiropractic system" that was getting incredible results. At first, I just brushed it off as more of the same snake oil pitches. But he persisted, practically dragging me along to a workshop from this chiropractor named Dr. Mike Stewart. As soon as Dr. Stewart started presenting, I had to do a double-take.

There was a precision, a sharp professionalism to how he methodically broke down patient cases that I hadn't witnessed before in this field. "Huh...maybe there's something more to this chiropractic thing after all," I thought to myself. After the workshop, I nervously approached the good doctor and asked for an adjustment, figuring he'd just crank me around like all the others. But Dr. Stewart simply said "No”, catching me completely off guard. He explained that he couldn't adjust me without first going through a proper examination and taking x-rays to analyze what was going on.

For the first time, I was being treated like an actual patient case, not just another body to be cracked. So I booked an appointment, but went in with a sly plan: "I'm not going to say a word about my conditions. If this guy really knows his stuff, he should be able to diagnose me himself. "Sure enough, after taking my x-rays, Dr. Stewart walks back in, takes one look at the films and immediately rattles off - with precise clinical accuracy - the issues with my tailbone, compression fractures, torn rotator cuff and sleeping problems like he was reading the page right out of my body's medical file.  

In that moment, I realized I had stumbled across the real deal. Someone who approached chiropractic not as a woowoo quick-fix, but as a methodical technique for activating the body's powerful self-healing ability. Over the ensuing weeks, Dr. Stewart's unique adjustments - performed with mathematical precision - freed me from the cycle of crippling pain I had been trapped in for so long.

All my symptoms rapidly dissolved, and I felt reborn. Deep down, I knew that I had to learn this technique inside and out so I could bring this same life-changing healing to others. I begged Dr. Stewart to take me on as a student, but he insisted I focus on my schooling first.

Undeterred, I showed up at his practice every day, doing grunt work like vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, whatever menial tasks I could just to be around his energy. Eventually, after pestering him relentlessly, he agreed to let me begin interning under his guidance.

From those humble beginnings, I would go on to master the transformative art of the Gonstead chiropractic technique and bring true healing to communities in need.