This past weekend I was installing a new ceiling fan that Kristina has been begging to install for several months now.  As I was mounting the fan to the ceiling when one of the mounting screws actually fell into the fan itself.  I didn’t have a magnetic screwdriver readily available so, I just took the fan off the mounting bracket and got the screw fished out of the fan.  Now in this process, I re-evaluated the wiring that I had done initially, it was wrong.  This gave me the opportunity the correct my mistake and install the fan correctly without any major hiccups.

This got me to thinking, that if that little screw would have never fell into the fan unit then the install would have been wrong and more frustrations were surely to follow. 

Sometimes when I am treating a patient, if success is not being attained it is imperative to step back from the situation and either start over or take a different approach.  The approach that I take the first time may not be the most beneficial but most chiropractors have a certain protocol that they like to follow, if this does not necessarily benefit the patient initially then another approach may need to be taken. 

As the years go in practice, I find myself questioning my approach from time to time. Is this beneficial to both myself and the patient?  Sometime making a mistake the first time or fumbling along can be a good thing.  I have said before that I don’t necessarily agree with long term treatment plans, so the change in the course of treatment is sometimes abrupt. 

I would like to preface this by saying that when I change the way I treat the patient, the patient may not even know.  It may be a different technique for a cervical adjustment or adding or subtracting flexion/distraction in the offices, stretching one muscle group over another or just leaving the patient alone to see if resting the area will benefit the patient the most.

Patients that have had a bad experience at a previous chiropractor can also benefit from this approach.  If results were not seen, a second chance can sometime result in a different result.  Different chiropractors have different approaches, this can be a great attribute about the profession and also one of the most frustrating because patients don’t always know what they are walking into.  So if you have been to a chiropractor that only used instrument adjusting and no results were seen, you may want to consider a chiropractor that uses manual adjusting techniques or SOT or flexion/distraction or other specific techniques.

Second chances can be a great thing, whether it is with a specific doctor that needs to use a different technique or if you need to change doctors all together in order to achieve the specific goal.  I feel like this a good life lesson, I never really thought a ceiling fan would do this to me but now I have a very good looking fan in our master bedroom that works like a charm when I turned the circuit breaker back on and it never would have turned out this way if it wouldn’t have been for a quarter inch screw that fell into the fan itself.

As stated before, if at first you don’t succeed try again or try a different approach in hopes that this will benefit everyone involved in the care.

A little caveat with this story, I am the least handy person in the world but this fan gives a great sense of pride because it works like a charm and looks great in the room. 

PS the red wire coming from the ceiling can through a little bit of a wrench in the situation when the step by step instructions do not include a red wire…it’s actually a wire coming from the outlet switch and is necessary to make the switch on the wall work. 

This was one memorable weekend that made me think outside of my normal box.