A Discussion With Old Friends

They’re back!  Well, for most of you we are. The majority of you have read at least something one of us has written in anything from a newspaper format to the journal Spine. But, here we are again an in a new forum for us. What we’ve been asked to do is to write about rehab. Now this is something that we like. We’ve (in this column, we will often use the word we to designate something that at least one of us has done; sort of a Borg thing) written and spoken about rehab and even invented rehabilitation devices. But the format that we’d like to use for this column is the format that we use when we lecture. We want to talk to you just like we’d talk to an old friend. That’s right, just to you. Not the doc down the street or a professor in some college or the president of your alma matter. No, we’ve arranged to have this whole magazine sent to thousands of people just so we could have an enriching conversation with you, one of our old friends.

 

Now for some things that we want you to understand:  1) We’re not any smarter than you are. No one is packing a lot more IQ points than the next guy, and that includes your favorite guru. 2) We do read a lot and we think about what we read. We’re information wonks; we have no lives. (Well, Roger has no life; Steve’s just naturally boring.) 3) We’re into easy, clinically usable, what works, rehabilitation. If you want something complicated, this is not for you. 4) We like low cost. If you have to spend a ton of money on rehab equipment, then only a few people will do rehab. We like to keep costs low. 5) We don’t think that you need 7,523 modules (or whatever number adds up to thousands of dollars) that the guru of the day is pushing, in order to do some good things in the rehab department. 6) One of our pet peeves is when authors have bios that indicate that they have hundreds of articles in “prestigious” journals. Look, this is not like saying billions served. It takes a lot of time to write an article that will be published in a “prestigious” journal. We have a simple suggestion. Go to the National Library of Medicine’s web site and search for the number of articles that the author has in that venue. All the “prestigious” authors we know have more than one or two articles whose abstracts can be found on the National Library of Medicine’s web site. Do the search for our names (one at a time please) and then for some of the other authors you read. The results might be interesting. 7) We take our work seriously, but we don’t take ourselves very seriously. Like we indicated, we know a lot of the “gurus” and we like lots of them. The majority are quite hard working; but for sheer brainpower, we’re all swimming in the same genetic pool. (Although, some days Roger’s standing in the shallow end.) 8) Most importantly, don’t ever do anything that we talk about unless you think it is right, and you feel qualified to do it. You are responsible for your patients. That’s a responsibility that we all take very seriously.

If, after you read these columns, you feel that you were having a conversation with old friends, then we’ve succeeded. But, as you know, old friends often indulge in a lot of good-natured banter; so, if we’re poking a little fun at you, just remember that we’re smiling.

Well, now you know a little bit about us, and, next time, we’ll chat about neck-related headaches and some rehab approaches to the problem. So until then, “Thanks, old friend, it’s always great to talk to you.  We’ll talk again soon.”

Note: This information in not intended as healthcare advice. The determination of the risk and usability of information rests entirely with the attending doctor of chiropractic.

Dr. Roger R. Coleman is a 1974 graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, practicing in Othello, WA.  He is a member of the Adjunct Research Faculty at Life Chiropractic College West, and on the postgraduate faculty of National University of Health Sciences.

Dr. Stephan J. Troyanovich is a 1987 graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, practicing in Normal, IL, and a member of the Adjunct Research Faculty, Dept. of Research, at Life Chiropractic College West.  He may be reached at 309-454-5556.