Insider Info

"This is my passion," says S. Kay Schilling of her career as a chiropractor. "It's sometimes difficult to be quiet about the philosophy of being a chiropractor. I wonder how many people have had unnecessary surgery."

Chiropractic care is a natural, hands-on health care that doesn't use any drugs or surgery. It emphasizes extensive neuro-muscular-skeletal diagnosis. The treatment involves adjusting or manipulating the spine.

Schilling, who shares a Pennsylvania chiropractic practice with her husband, believes in natural medicine. None of her four children has ever been to a medical doctor. Nor have they received the standard childhood immunizations. "They've been phenomenally healthy," she says. "I'm more convinced now than ever."

Chiropractor Greg Martin agrees. "During university, I had an experience with a chiropractor which I found to be very interesting. So, I became familiar with chiropractic, and felt that it fit my philosophy of a more natural means to achieve good health."

Both have had special patients that made their careers even more worthwhile. Schilling remembers one three-month-old girl in particular. "She was brought to me with her neck drawn to one side. A medical doctor told the mother to stretch the neck to the other side. But the mother said when she did this the baby just cried and cried. The doctor wanted to perform surgery and cut a muscle in the neck.

"I adjusted the infant," says Schilling, "basically just as I would an adult, and she was markedly improved after the first one. She could turn her little head and look at her grandmother." The little girl had her spine adjusted three more times and now is completely cured.

Martin has special memories of a young girl who recently came to him with migraine headaches. "She had failed her year at school and became quite reclusive," he says. "As well, she and her mother were quite discouraged as they had been to numerous doctors and specialists, and had many diagnostic tests performed on her -- all to no avail.

"My evaluation of this young lady revealed a problem with the function of two vertebrae in her neck that were irritating nerves that, in turn, caused her headache. After only two weeks of treatment she had returned to almost normal function, with little or no pain. Needless to say that she and her mother are very happy.

"What is exciting about this case is that we were able to locate the cause of her problem," says Martin. "And by using very gentle chiropractic adjustments, we were able to restore her health without the use of any medications."

The desire to help people is shared by most chiropractors.

"I knew in the third grade that I would enter the health-care field," remembers chiropractor Clarence Wray. "A chiropractor helped my mother with a sinus problem when a medical doctor couldn't help. She had an adjustment and it worked. And a chiropractor helped my father with his back that he injured working on the railroad." After witnessing these mini-miracles, Wray's choice was clear.

Since entering the field, Wray has performed a few mini-miracles of his own.

"One case really sticks out," says Wray. "After I'd been in practice for about two months, I had a new patient come in with extreme pain in his lower back and I treated him. Then he didn't come back. I didn't know if I helped him or if he didn't like me or what. Then he came in five years later and asked if I knew what I'd done for him. He said he'd been off work for five years before he came to me, and that one adjustment made him better."

He also helped his mother with her problem shoulder. Wray studied new techniques for shoulder treatments before trying it on his mother. It worked. Wray also finds treating severe headaches and lower-back pain rewarding.

New York City chiropractor Emily Davidson took a different path to the profession. "I chose to be a chiropractor after 12 years as a physician's assistant. I no longer believed that pharmacological treatment should be the first-line approach to illness," says Davidson.

"I've always had a powerful sense of touch and intuition when dealing with patients, so I decided to go into chiropractic as a way to use that sense of touch to facilitate natural treatment of disease.

"I find my work much more satisfying than my previous straight-jacketed world where I often felt like I was taking care of the hospital instead of taking care of the patient."

Schilling almost became a physical therapist. "Someone mentioned chiropractic to me, and I mentioned it to mom [a nurse]. And before long a representative of a chiropractic college called me. Being 18,...I was very impressed that someone from a college would make a person-to-person call to me."

So she went to the college in Davenport, Iowa, and after three months became "passionate" about chiropractic. "And ever since then it is my passion," she says.

There are some frustrations to this profession, though. "I just wish more people would make it their first choice instead of sometimes a last resort," Schilling says.

"Again, our philosophy is that through maintenance of the spine -- if we can keep free from interference -- it's possible for the body to take care of itself with proper exercise. And it's totally free of drugs. This is except for accidents. Then there is a need for medical treatment and care."