Why Did I Become A Chiropractor?
This is a popular dinner question. ‘Why did you become an accountant?’ ‘Why did you become a paramedic?’ And if you’d asked me to answer this before I graduated, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, at least in a roundabout way that’s going to be able to be put into a short blog post.
Let me take you back to the beginning. I studied Human Musculoskeletal Science at Bristol University, mainly anatomy and physiology. And so many people asked me, why on earth did you choose that? The reason was, I enjoyed biology and playing sport when I was at school.
I thought Bristol was good university and the course was related to my interests. As many people that attend University, thinking further ahead wasn’t my top priority, and I just wanted to get my degree.
It was only after the second year when my mentor asked me what I wanted to do long term to which I replied, ‘I have no idea. What do you think I should do?’ She told me that I could work in research, or I could go and do medicine. I thought being a doctor is a pretty good job, I can try that, my parents would be proud of me.
I was all ready to go and do post graduate medicine at Bristol. And then my mum met a Chiropractor on a bike ride in Haslemere where I grew up. And she started telling the Chiropractor, my story. And he said, ‘before you go down that route, why don’t you let him come and observe me at my clinic and see how we do things’.
I thought, this is great. I had no real idea what Chiropractor did, and I went to meet him. His name was Glenn, he worked in Godalming. It was a great day, very interesting to understand how a Chiropractor works, what they do and how his office was run.
At the time that I was doing this clinic observation with Glenn, I was also working as a healthcare assistant in the hospital, working with very sick people helping them in preparation for starting my medical degree because we had to get a certain number of hours working in hospitals and care homes to build up that profile.
Working with Glenn and seeing how he treated his patients as he worked with healthy people to get them better, optimising their health and wellness, in order to keep them healthy long term, working in prevention rather than reactive care when people are sick.
He was also using the body’s amazing healing capacity to get people better rather than putting medications and drugs into their body, made a lot of sense to me at the time. And every single day, every single week that I grow in this career it makes more sense to me that there is absolutely a place for modern medicine in our life. But more of our clients are deciding not to take painkillers, medications, avoiding surgery long term, and trying to use conservative care to get their bodies in the best position and address the root cause of the issue.
Rather than just masking a symptom long term. It made so much more sense to me. So much so that Glenn told me to go and spend a day with his friend Tim wood over in Weybridge, who’s a fantastic Chiropractor. And Tim wrote a recommendation for me to go and study Chiropractic at the AECC where I spent four years developing my craft as a Chiropractor, still not really understanding what Chiropractic does and the potential that I was about to learn.
And to now, helping people with chronic pain, helping people come off strong painkillers like and giving them a better quality of life, helping them to live a life free of pain, to be mobile, independent, and long term and building a healthier community in West Byfleet.
Thank you to Glenn and Tim for reaching out to my Mum that day and for showing me that there are other options. And there are different ways that you can help people to achieve real health and optimal wellness.
What we treat at West Chiropractic:
Our chiropractic locations
