From Patient to Pioneer 2/10 - The Chiropractic Puzzle & The Brain Connection

Back to School: Discuss entering Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2011. The wild reality of being pregnant during the rigorous program and leaving the hospital just two days after giving birth to take my exams.

The Migraine Crisis: Midway through the program, I started getting daily, debilitating migraines. Throwing up in a garbage can for weeks and months on end, unable to drive or sleep.

Discovering Neurology: A friend introduced you to a chiropractic neurologist. My mind-blowing experience of having a doctor do specific eye movements that instantly took away your migraine and nausea.

Expanding the Toolkit:  300 hours of training with the Carrick Institute to learn how to treat brain-based issues like strokes, concussions, autism, and ADHD. I am now board-eligible.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the Learning Corner. This is Dr. Nicole. Last time I shared my roots in massage therapy. But as my clients kept asking me complex health questions, I realized that I needed a bigger toolkit. Today we're talking about why I went back to school while pregnant and how throwing up in a garbage can from daily migraines led me to the magic of neurology. Okay, so when I went back to school at Northwestern Health Science University in 2011. Okay, so let's talk about this. The reality of being pregnant in school, it just really um it shakes you up a little bit. But when I decided that it was now or never, it was kind of like we're gonna get this done. I don't care what it's gonna take. I've done a lot of things in my life. At that point, I had multiple locations, multiple massage therapists working underneath me, um, lots of stuff going on. So why couldn't I do that? But when I back went back to school at Northwestern, it was kind of a difference in this is serious. I'm really doing this. I'm going to be able to help patients. I'm gonna be a real doctor. I am going to have the ability to help people live the lives they've always wanted to live. And so back in 2011, I was pregnant. I entered um Northwestern Health Science University up in Bloomington, Minnesota. Um, I basically the first term I had to split um my load of curriculum because I was not able to be in the labs while pregnant. They have a policy about that. So I had to split the first term, and when I did that, I was like, okay, I can do this. I was kind of bored, but I was able to work. So I worked on the weekends. Um, I had my baby in November. We started sometime in, I want to say August. I should probably write all this stuff down, but anyways, so I went back to school a couple months in. I went and had Elise, my daughter, super awesome, love of my life, um, back in 2011. And two days after I gave birth, I had a test, and I couldn't miss it. So, you know, Minnesota has snow, it has weather, things that make it really hard to drive, but here I am, just gave birth. Two days later, I'm I'm still admitted to the hospital. I'm like, I have to go to my test. So I still have my bracelet on. I grab all my stuff. I'm like, okay, Dan, I'm gonna go. You hold down the fort, don't do anything that I wouldn't do, and just don't make any decisions while I'm gone with Elise. He's like, no problem. So I get in my car, and on the way down the elevator, the doctor and nurses were like, Where are you going? You're still mid of the hospital. I'm like, I'll be back. I have an exam. So I run out to my car, I get to the school. It had been a crappy weather day. Took me a little while, but I went and took my test. And when you're taking a test and you're in graduate school, maybe in any school, but in our graduate school, they were like, you cannot have a phone on you, you cannot have this. So I went up to my teacher and I said, I'd hate to ask, but my baby's in the hospital. I just had her a couple days ago. Can I keep my phone on me? Um, because I just need it. I'm still admitted there. I have to go back right after this. So can we? And she looks at me and she's like, no problem. Congratulations, by the way. And everybody knew I was pregnant, whatever. But so I go and I start walking back to my seat and she announces it. And everybody, if you have an excuse for not being here to take a test, it better be a good one. Nicole had her baby this weekend. Congratulations. And all of you can make it from here on out. Like she had this speech going, I'm just like mortified, right? I'm just walking to the back going, oh, I didn't do that to be known for it. I didn't even think it was a big deal. Everybody has babies, you know, everybody does this stuff. But, anyways, so when I went back to school, I knew it was gonna be hard. I knew that there was gonna be an uphill, like one thing after another. But what I didn't know is that I was gonna get migraines every day. Pretty much, I think it was like, was it the end of trimester two, maybe the beginning of trimester three, somewhere in there? I'd have to look at my timeline, but I was getting the migraines that it was light sensitive, right? So you get an aura and you you just you need a dark room and you're nauseous and you actually throw up. I would throw up every single time I got a migraine. And so I'm like, well, I'm gonna go get chiropractic care because that's what you do, right? I'm in chiropractic school, that didn't help. I'd get massage, oh, this is gonna help, that didn't help. I'd go get acupuncture, that didn't help. Hydration, that didn't help. And finally, it was like, okay, I'm gonna have to quit school. And I talked to one of my fellow classmates, and she actually had a health problem similar, um, as it was a neurologic issue, and she recommended going to a chiropractic neurologist in the Twin Cities, and I said, Oh, it's worth a try because I'm gonna have to quit. Like, I couldn't even function. I couldn't take care of my business, to take care of my kid, couldn't be at home, couldn't be at school. I was miserable. Everything I did, it was like five days a week, I would get a migraine, and I couldn't explain why, what was happening, and so they don't talk about how stress does those things to you. Um, so I didn't correlate all of this happening. First child, huge school load, still working pretty much part to full time, traveling one hour to and from school, all of this stuff happening to my body. They don't mention that stress is gonna be doing this, and that you certain people can't take certain stress. So, again, I'm looking for help. No help with chiropractors, no help with massage, no help with acupuncture, no help with diet and nutrition, like what I knew, right? It didn't help. So I went to the chiropractic neurologist, and I got the VNG done, I got the assessment done, um, the neurologic workup, and I can't remember if I sat with him that day or came back the next day. Um, but what I do recall is sitting there and him explaining, well, I don't know how many concussions you've had, but you've had a lot. And with your eye movement, I can help you. I know what's going on, and we're gonna need a week, and it's gonna count cost X amount, and this is you can't get massaged, you can't get adjusted, you can't have people touch you for a while. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So I was like, Whoa, what do you mean? He goes, Well, watch my finger, and so he did some eye movements, and all of a sudden my migraine appeared out of nowhere. Like, what did you just do? Is this voodoo magic? And I proceeded to go throw up in the garbage, and he goes, Oh no, no, and he did something at follow my finger and did something different, and my migraine went away and my nausea went away. And I was like, I don't care how much it costs, fix me. I need to stay in chiropractic school and become a doctor. So that was my first exposure to neurology as a chiropractor and more of a hands-on approach. So for me, I always thought, well, neurologists, they just give you drugs and they do surgery, right? It's pretty cool. Like, hey, let's see what your nystagmus looks like. And wow, like, what are these things doing? This is cool. Here's your prescription, here's your cabapentin. This opened up the biggest world for me. I was so intrigued. I'm like, what? So when I when I learn, I'm like, okay, well, where'd you go to school? He goes, Well, I went to Kerrick Institute. And I'm like, okay, and I teach for him, and I blah blah blah. And I'm like, what the heck? So here I am finally getting some answers, finally seeing some hope. I can stay in chiropractic school, I can work my job, there's a light to the end of the tunnel. Wow, like now I can go and train for this. So I jumped in and I said, okay, now there's some lightning loads on my um curriculum, so it's more towards the end of my program. I sign up and I started taking the Kerrick Institute program, um, whatever for neurological training. So I get in there and I start taking um this weekend seminar and that weekend seminar, and I'm just eating it up. And I still look at and read the books that were recommended through there, and I have all of this in my toolkit now. I've helped a lot of patients who are neurologically unstable become stable again. Um it allows me to work with um past stroke victims, um, concussions, a lot of things like that, where um traditional chiropractic treatment isn't going to necessarily help them the way it could. Probably helps them a little, but maybe not the way it could. So now I know the insight to the neurology and how to functionally use that instead of just saying, okay, there's no hope for that. Um, for example, like I helped a patient understand how to use their affected arm from their stroke. And so, you know, you use mirroring and you do all these other things in-house, and then you write up a treatment plan and allow them to do things at home with their spouse or kids or whatever they can do on their own, and it helps train their brain because our brain is plastic and it can learn and it can move, right? So these are the things where I was just blown away, right? So, my school, that choice to go into school caused stress. Having a baby caused stress, pushed me over the edge with my past concussions, um, started having migraines constantly, finally figuring there's hope I can stay in school and become the doctor I always wanted to become. And the neurology part came into it. I was able to finish all my training and become board eligible just to utilize for me. I don't know if I'm ever gonna go and get board certified. With every certification, there comes a whole layer of like for the nutrition board I've considered as well, because I have training there, we'll talk about that. But you have to go and teach in a college, and you you there's a lot more that comes to it. And right now I am a mom, and right now I do homeschool, and right now I want to be very present in my family's life. So I do feel that pull as well. But I am board eligible for um neurology, and this piece for me put together a whole lot of information that I wouldn't otherwise have had, and it allows me to go if it's really severe and I can't help, then I refer out accordingly. Um, obviously, you have to know your limits as a practitioner. However, these are the things that helped bring me full circle from, and there is another piece we'll talk about too. So massage into chiropractic, chiropractic, going, there's more than just bones and neurology. You gotta add in the brain, you gotta add in the functional piece of it. You have to understand there's more than a couple ways to make a goulash. I don't know if you guys are Midwesterners. Um, it's a a dish you throw a lot of things together and you put it in the oven. Anyways, there's a lot of ways to do these things, but I want to talk about my journey. A lot of times I get so wrapped up in, oh, what's happening? And here's the science behind it, and here's what I do for memberships, and here's what's this, and here's what's that, that I forget to talk about my own testimony, my own struggles. I be I became a practitioner because I was a patient who didn't have any more hope with certain doctors. I couldn't find the answers that made sense to me. I couldn't find somebody to really um take the time and explain how your body works and why that would matter and and what are the options and where should you go and and all these other things. And I just discovering neurology this way, it just blew my mind and opened up a whole new realm of possibility. So getting the brain to talk to the body efficiently is that second piece, right? So I look at the trio of my clinic and you look at massage therapy, that's the muscle. Then you look at chiropractic, that's the bone, the nerves, the innervations, right? So you're building on that now, even a step further into the neurology on how it functions, right? So we're building this piece piece by piece into the puzzle of me as a patient becoming a practitioner because of the needs I had. But even with neurology and chiropractic care, something is still missing, and that's what we're gonna talk about next time. So let us leave it there, and I want you to tune in next time with anticipation of what that third piece will be. And I kind of talked about it, so maybe you are listening, and maybe you will know exactly what I'm talking about then. But until then, have a great week, and we'll touch base on the next episode.