Roanoke Chiropractor : Dr. David Kilmer
I was told there was nothing they could find wrong, and gave me pain pills and muscle relaxers. My head was killing me, terrible constant headaches, and I was getting desperate.
They could've amputated at the shoulders just to get rid of the pain....
It was a hot July 4th, 1980 outside of San Diego. We had been jumping off a 60 foot cliff into a stream fed pool most of the day. I went up intending to do a "gainer", run off the cliff face and do a backwards somersault. Going off the edge, my foot slipped and I fell backwards, whacking my head on the rock face and then fell the 60 feet to the water below.
The next thing I knew, I woke up in the stream-bed clinging to a rope climbing up a 45 degree angled slope. I don't remember the interval but the next thing I do remember is becoming "aware" in the hospital, talking to the doctors.
I had a horrible headache, my neck was killing me, and they told me the couldn't find anything wrong.
They gave me pain pills and muscle relaxers and sent me on my way. I suffered terribly for the next month, was told repeatedly there was nothing wrong, and they even started looking at me funny when I requested stronger or different pain pills.
A friend on mine told me to go to the chiropractor, but I was afraid. My neck was killing me and I could barely turn it, and the thought of someone taking my neck and turning it quickly just seemed counter intuitive and not a good idea. A couple of days later, I was getting desperate, you could've amputated at the shoulders just to get some relief, so I called the chiropractor.
He got me in later that day, took some x-rays, did an examination, felt my neck and muscles (the first time it had really been done!) and told me I had some vertebra out of their normal position. He then adjusted my neck and I was 75% better immediately! It was unbelievable. I went through a treatment program for the next couple of months and completely recovered from this near devastating injury.
In the years since, my neck still in good shape from regular chiropractic care, I have often thought and wondered about what kind of shape would my neck have been in without chiropractic adjustments, and what kind of different, more sedentary life I would have been forced to have.
I owe a tremendous debt to that first chiropractor and really chiropractic itself. When you need to be adjusted, there really is no alternative. I don't care how many and what type of pills you take. Nothing else will do.
After I graduated from Towson High School in Towson, Maryland I attended Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, and later continued with additional study at San Marcos College in California. My post-graduate professional studies were completed in 1985 at the Southern California University of Health Sciences where I received a Doctorate in Chiropractic and a BS in Human Biology. That is also where I met Susan, the very first day of school and we've been together ever since.
Chiropractic school was tough. We carried an average of 22 hours per trimester, a very tough schedule. The most important thing that I learned was that the nervous system controls everything in the body and that this system may be influenced for the general health of the body.
Physiology (the function of the body) and Biochemistry were probably the most fascinating courses that I took. We are indeed wonderfully and fearfully made, way beyond our imagination. The very concept of homeostasis - the fact that we are a self regulating and self healing organism is simply incredible. All of the systems in the body that are responsible for this self healing and regulation are under control of the nervous system - that is what is so fascinating about Chiropractic; the fact that we can influence this nervous system to influence normal function. Wow!
Our underlying philosophy is that the body, given the proper set up circumstances, has the innate ability to heal itself, and that these "circumstances" largely come from the implementation of knowledge.
One of the most important services that we are involved in is getting a patient to look differently at their health and health care choices. America is largely into an event based medical model. This means that we have an adverse event with our health and then we seek care. Or we take pain pills and just deal with the symptoms. Or we just ignore the warning signs.
We are way more interested in a process based medical model. This means that poor health is largely due to a series of events or choices that we make that eventually come home to roost. Let me illustrate.
Let's say a person has a heart attack. Medicine would say that was an unfortunate event. I would say that yes, it was an unfortunate event, BUT, it was most likely an unfortunate outcome due to poor lifestyle choices over time. A process over a lifetime of poor choices that eventually led to the heart attack.
We see this probably everyday in the clinic. Time and again new patients come to us with pain - neck, low back, knees, shoulders, headaches to name a few. They had gone to their family doc who quickly listened and with one hand on the door wrote a prescription. If you go to the MD you're going to get a pill.
What you need to know is that all drugs have some toxic side effect. From a musculoskeletal standpoint, the vast majority of patient's pain has to do with poor biomechanics - the mechanical functioning of the body. We excel at correcting these biomechanical faults, correcting the underlying cause of the pain and not just covering it up with pills.
Health comes from within, not from without and this philosophy has been shown to me to be absolutely true over 25 years in practice.
Countless, near desperate and near hopeless patients have sought our care over the years and time after time chiropractic along with lifestyle coaching has rejuvenated their life. I know beyond doubt that a lot of those folks would have a very poor quality of life had it not been for chiropractic.
A quick true story to underline this.
Friends of mine at church, one of the pastors and his wife, adopted two kids from China. The boy who is 6 came to me first. He was an active happy child yet had a kind of rolling waddling gait (walked abnormally) and was slightly stooped forward. His mother told me that for all those years he had been sleeping on a board. Now that can't be good I thought.
The first time I adjusted him it seemed like every joint in his body released. Over the next couple of weeks it was apparent that he was walking more normally with his feet pointing straight forward and he was no longer stooped forward. Now his spine will grow straight and the life force it carries within the spinal cord can fully supply and nurture his internal organs. Now his joints will not wear out prematurely like they would have been prone to do had he not been "straightened out".
What a blessing chiropractic has been to this little boy, and what an honor it was for me to work with him.
I'll tell you a funny story bout how Dr. Susan and I met. It was spring 1982 and I had just completed my interview at school, I was accepted, and I was ecstatic! The first place that I wanted to go was to the anatomy lab. I walked through the doors into this large white room with stainless steel tables everywhere, students in while lab coats bent over bodies everywhere, and this really cute gal talking to a group of students. On the table in front of her was an eyeball with the nerve, blood vessels and muscles attached. I very briefly met her and to be honest I was more enamored with the eyeball than her. Later that day I met her again at lunch.
That summer, I told myself Ok, you're going to be a doctor, you have to be focused, don't get involved with any girls. On to school that fall, and my first class was anatomy. As I was walking through the door, I heard "Hey, David". I turned toward the voice and there was the eyeball girl! I was fumbling for words, she thankfully re-introduced herself and told me she had notes from previous classes if I wanted them. We later went out to lunch, I got the notes..... and the girl. We've been together ever since. We later joked that she "kept an eye out for me". We very quickly became absolutely inseparable. So much for being focused and not getting involved!
We have a 13 year old daughter Julia who attends Roanoke Valley Christian School. She is an awesome kid, full of life and has an ever present smile. Julia plays soccer and volleyball and is active in her Youth Group at church. She is also a Junior Ski Patroller at Wintergreen where she was top in her class her first year.
We attend Parkway Wesleyan Church, a great church. Susan and I are both cyclists, Susan on the road bike and I'm mostly into mountain biking although I do like the road as well. I am a ski patroller at Wintergreen resort and for the next couple of years am the Instructor of Record for the Outdoor Emergency Care course at Wintergreen. We all love to water-ski, we have 3 dogs, 2 cats and a hamster.
We are lovin' life!
Both Susan and I adjust each other at least once every 2 weeks and often times more. Julia gets regular adjustments as well. We think it is vital for our spines to be aligned often, especially in our active sport filled life. There is no doubt we have benefited tremendously from these regular adjustments on a number of fronts.
I can tell you that we rarely get sick and I feel stronger on the bike in the mountains than perhaps ever and a lot of my cycling buddies are decades younger than myself. I find that I need exercise, hard physical exercise almost as much as oxygen. I believe that everyone on this planet needs to find some type of cardiovascular exercise that they enjoy and therefore will do on a regular basis.
I've remarked in the past that I ride my bike so I can eat what I want. That's only partially true because I love and desire fried fish and fried chicken but I don't allow myself to eat them much because I simply can't for obvious health reasons. When it comes to eating on a daily basis, and especially when one has health challenges, I think it wise to eat simply and as close to the Creator as possible.
What will you choose to eat, food by man which is highly processed and laden with chemicals or food by God which is minimally processed and totally natural in it's organic state?
The choice is obvious in this chemically toxic world. We do have a lot of respect for modern medicine and some of the wonders that medicine delivers. I probably would not be here if not for emergency medicine.
This is shocking.
American traumatic medicine and surgery is truly outstanding and saves many lives every day. However, as reported in JAMA and by the World Health Organization, America is an astounding 27th in the world in health and near the bottom for infant mortality.
I think it is largely due to our dependence on drugs that only treat the symptoms of disease but not the underlying cause of the problem itself. Medications can sometimes be safely used when utilized as an adjunctive treatment while the cause is being worked on but should rarely be used as the primary treatment. There certainly are exceptions and yes there are life saving medications no doubt, but, when it comes to biomechanics and musculoskeletal problems drugs seldom do much good. They may make you feel better for a short period but as soon as the drug wears off the symptoms come right back again because the cause is still there.
“Thanks for visiting our site. I look forward to meeting you in person and learning how we may be of service to you with today’s safe and natural chiropractic care. Give our office a call, or email me using the link below and let’s arrange a time to explore your options.”
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