Colin and I were at the golf course a couple of weeks ago when all of a sudden I start to have left sided upper back, shoulder blade and neck pain.  Now, I don’t want this to portray that those symptoms should not be a little bit of a concern because that is the classic heart attack symptoms but I knew what I had done and knew why the pain was present.

But the point that I’m really kind of getting at is that whenever I am suffering from some sort of ailment or pain, it never fails that patients will present with this type of pain.  The number of people that have presented recently is uncanny.  I’m young enough to get through most of my aches and pains by myself but this was one of those things that I actually needed help.  To say that it is totally cleared up, I’d be lying to you but it’s kind of weird the things that you try with self care, all of a sudden you start using them on patients because you are essentially your own guinea pig and therapies I would not normally try are now all of a sudden fair game because I’m trying to get out of pain as fast as possible.

I will be the first person to say, that sometimes getting adjusted can make things worse before they get better but I’m in a unique situation that I have colleagues and numerous therapies at my beckon call. The use of massage guns, TENS units, kinesiotape, lasers and roller tables were all used including the occasional adjustment, it’s ultimately getting better but I’m forever grateful that I have all sorts of options that are available.

Every time I have an ache or a pain, it will never fail that patients will start to show up with that kind of pain.  I’m not indicating that I have all types of pain or ailments that people come in with but if you present to the office you should ask if I have been having the same type of pain because it’s almost becoming comical of the symptoms that I am experiencing versus what has been coming into the office.

Projection and perception can be power things in practice.  Doctors and clinicians are not allowed to have a bad day when it comes to dealing with the public.  I’m always having a great day in the mind of the patient and that’s how it’s going to stay.  While chiropractors literally hear people’s aches and pain every day, does it get old at times, sure it does, but ultimately I went into practice for the relationships and helping you.  Sometimes just being a sounding board can be just as therapeutic as the treatment itself.

I can guarantee you that if you were to go into a doctor’s office and they told you how miserable their day is going, the ability to help the patient essentially goes out the door.  Patients want to be heard and want to feel like someone is listening.  Pain can be very motivating factor to seek care, but most pain is temporary in nature but relationships can last decades and as the years go into practice, I’m finding this out pretty clearly.  Form a relationship with the patient and results will follow.

In ending, projection whether it be specific pain symptoms that you are experiencing are interesting because odds are I have dealt with some sort of this pain and trial and error on myself can indicated the course of the treatment.  Secondly, if you ever ask how my day is going, it’s always great, no matter what because the office is there to project a positive feeling and a healing environment.  We are here to help, whether it is an ear to listen or to help with pain that I have experienced.

Come one, come all we will be there for you today and for many years to come.

If you have ever been to a chiropractor in your life, odds are you have seen numerous different techniques and equipment.  While it does make the profession unique it also can be frustrating from a patient stand point.  As the chiropractor, I know what most of the table do and have a general idea of what they are trying to accomplish but I, like everyone else, have a preference.

At this point in my career, I’m getting to a point that I am tired of using equipment that I either don’t like or that is not in that great of shape.  So, over the course of the next couple of weeks you may be seeing a few empty rooms as we are preparing for new equipment that will be coming in.

I am what the profession would consider primarily a Diversified doctor that performed flexion/distraction.  I also prefer to have a Hylo table available in the offices for elderly patients or for those patients that are unable to crawl onto a table.

When most doctors are first starting out, they buy equipment that they can afford, not necessarily the type of equipment that they prefer as some of it can get pricey.  You can pull financing on new equipment at just about any time but that gets old after a while because it just adds to the payments that you would be currently making.  I was in the exact position up until about 3 years ago.  I was using equipment that I didn’t necessarily prefer but made due because I was unwilling to pay the price.

My timing was a little off when I bought these new tables that will be delivered in the middle of March.  I sold my old equipment a little too quickly.  I did not know how much of a demand there would be for the type of equipment that I was trying to get rid of. As a result of this, I am going to have to juggle tables for about 3-4 weeks until my new tables arrive.

Most people have no idea of the cost of this type of equipment, it appears to be super simple but there are some complexities that go along with tables, especially when you have a tall doctor.  While equipment does not have to be expensive, I plan on using it for a long time and when it comes down to it, it is my livelihood.  So, I’ve reached the conclusion to buy equipment that I like and prefer as I don’t plan on getting new stuff for a little while.

There are two sides to the story for a young chiropractor out there, buy brand new equipment that you know exactly how to use and can keep for a long time but end up financing it or do you buy used equipment that can get you by until you find exactly what you like and want to ultimately buy new.  You know the route I went down and I do not regret it in the least.  Buy what you can afford at the time and upgrade as you go, plus your sales guy will like you a little more.

So, if you see a few empty rooms over the course of the next couple of weeks, fear not, they will eventually get filled back up but my timing was not all that great and at the end of the day, the new tables will be there for the long haul with hopefully no major complaints.  We look forward to seeing everyone in the coming days/weeks.

Do you ever look around at businesses and wonder how are they so successful? I often do, I think about how a business works, I’ve said this before that I am very much a numbers person.  I know exactly what I need to do on a weekly and monthly basis to make my business work.  The longer I go into practice I am learning that business can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. We prefer to keep it as simple as it comes.  We would like to think that we are good at a few things and we are going to keep doing those few things as well as we can.

Look around at offices or business in general, I understand that businesses have to adapt, but do you ever wonder that as soon as people start to expand into areas that they are not so knowledgeable about that they loss focus on what they are really good at.

I used to think that I wanted to do all sorts of therapies and keep expanding into areas that may well be in our scope of practice within the state of Nebraska but have no real knowledge on them other than they would bring additional resources/revenue into the office.  I feel that this would be a huge detriment to the office and profession in general, as you loss the overall focus of the office.

I’m reaching a point in the office that we are going to continue to do three things: chiropractic adjustments, acupuncture and a bunch of DOT physicals.  There is really no need for us to expand past that point at this time.  We know exactly how to do these things and feel that we can bring extreme value to patients providing these services.

Don’t look for us to be adding stem cell treatments, IV fluid treatments, hyperbaric O2 chambers or expensive decompression tables any time soon.  I have figured out that patients that come into our office are not looking for long drawn out treatment plans or expensive visits, they like simple.

We feel that at Spracklin Chiropractic we provide a wonderful value in care and get great results on conditions that respond well to chiropractic care.  Insurance is worked with and treatments are tailored to the individual.  Discounts are not advertised for you to come into the office.  We are what we are and the procedures that are performed in the office bring about repeatable outcomes for numerous different types of people.

If you give people what they want and the flexibility to make an informed decision you do not need some long drawn out sales pitch/scare tactic to convince yourself that care is necessary. I’m a terrible sales person and I’m brutally honest almost to a fault, so if you are looking for an honest opinion or a second opinion with not a lot of sugar coating, you may find the office refreshing.

Creating a fun, family atmosphere is what we try to do because who doesn’t like to have a good time while they work.  Certain people will catch some grief from me and we may have a good laugh together, this is part of the treatment process.  Sometimes just talking and not thinking about the pain is the most beneficial thing you can do.

We lean towards keeping things super simple in the offices, walk-ins are normally always welcome and insurance is accepted.  If you have ever been turned off by chiropractic due to an office that with a year-long treatment plan, give us a try it may be a low key experience to remember.

Remember when you were a kid and had to go door to door selling candy bars to fund your little league baseball uniforms.  Trust me most of us do.  Now you’re an adult and 80% of the time you have to tell the kid NO.  This is the life of a business owner.

I’m constantly getting pitched MLM pitches for supplements, yearbook ads, sponsorship opportunities and raffle tickets.  It has been said that if you were to give to everyone that walked in the door, you would not be in business because you would be giving away all of you money.

Golf outings, benefit dinners and everything in between are constantly being asked.  I’ve changed my tune a little bit the past couple of years, as I do feel that being present at these events can be a huge asset but there is always something that could be drawing your time and money.

Kristina and I are reaching a point in our lives that we are finding a few causes that are close to our family and those are the things that we give to.

I do not seek out opportunities to give money, we already have a couple of things that are near and dear to our hearts, we give to those regularly and basically without asking.  An email will almost never do it, I have a philosophy that if you are requesting funds/money a simple phone call can go a long way.  Leave a message at the front desk; while Marty and Carol are great gate-keepers they are most certainly not cold hearted enough to just hang up the phone on you.

If you stop by the office, please do not expect an instant answer, we evaluate funding on nearly a daily basis so we take each request on a day-to-day basis. Most of the time, the way to get donations out of Spracklin Chiropractic is to appeal to Kristina; I feel that I have essentially become numb to the requests and am relatively accustomed to saying no, but Kristina has a little bit of a soft spot for certain people/organizations that make an effective pitch.

The point of the post is to make the point, that just because you do not see Spracklin Chiropractic on a lot of advertising and sponsorships is not because we do not want to be, in fact a lot of times if the cause is near and dear to us, we would gladly give, but it’s that we were just not asked.  We are not locals of either community that we work/live in.  Living in the area for 9-10 years does not necessarily make you a local person, we were born and raised in other parts of the state.

We get asked all the time, are you new to town? Well, the definition of new has to be defined, but I would say no.  Spracklin Chiropractic has been in business for roughly 9 years in Kearney and almost 5 years in Minden.  While we may be relatively new to the business world around the area, we are fairly easy going people that try to help causes we find valuable to ourselves or the community as a whole.

This is by no means a solicitation to send all time/monetary requests in, but just know that we try to be involved and give back to the communities that have provided our family a wonderful livelihood and opportunities and hope to continue for the foreseeable future.

I have talked a few times about the therapies that our offices offer and this post may come back to bite me in the butt because my preference and ideas have changed a little bit over the past year or so. Normally we offer electric stim, ultrasound, combo ultrasound, acupuncture and last year we added a low level laser to our repertoire.

I have always leaned pretty heavily on electric stim and ultrasound because people like them and they normally feel good, but I’m finding out that they don’t have much benefit long term in regards to clinical improvement.  While the patient may like it while the therapy is being performed, the long term benefit is limited.

I will always have a preference to combo ultrasound for SI joint and lower back pain because I have seen some great results over the past couple of years with this type of therapy. Most of time when a patient presents to the office, it will scream combo ultrasound in my head as they are describing the symptoms and they will fall within a very specific criteria for that particular therapy.

Acupuncture is a whole different animal and I don’t really know why I even consider it a therapy because it could be a treatment all in itself.  It is normally a therapy of last resort unless the patient requests it.  Radicular leg pain with lower back pain can and will respond well to acupuncture, we use it quite a bit for headaches and honestly we are starting to get into using for extremities including symptoms of carpal tunnel and tennis elbow.

Now, let’s get into the topic of laser therapy for a little bit. If you would have asked me a year ago what my thoughts are about laser, I would have him-hawed the answer and tried to move onto another topic. But I bought a laser about a year ago and we have been getting some pretty cool results with it.  From people that come in with neck pain, elbow pain, knee pain, plantar fasciitis and even our bread and butter, back pain. I have started to use it more over the past couple of months and the results continue to impress me.

The purpose of therapies is to induce a healing response to a specific area, whether that is with an electrical current, a needle or a high powered light. More and more research is coming out to show that laser therapy can be beneficial for a wide array of conditions. Research is a crazy thing when it comes to these therapies because our profession is not known for doing wide ranging research and just taking a sales pitch and running with it.

If you know me at all you will know that I can be one stubborn SOB, but I will not be outdone by other practices when it comes to having the best options available for patients.  Recently I purchased a second laser so that I won’t have to transport a laser back and forth between offices; I will literally have no excuse.  Both offices are set up almost exactly alike, if you come to one, you will get the exact same treatment as the other.

In all seriousness, if you haven’t tried the laser yet, you may want to give it a try as it may be that missing piece that will get you over the hump, whether it is headaches, back pain, ankle pain, elbow pain or anything in between, you may be surprised what a session or two can do.

This was one of those weeks where I needed to have this conversation a couple of times, while I do have it from time to time, it can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow for some patients.

When a patient comes in to the office and has a specific complaint, most often than not, it will be something along the lines of neuropathy or radiculopathy is present.  A “pinched nerve,” is what most people will describe it as. Now I make absolutely no promises in our offices as to how many visits it will take to get rid of the pain or symptoms we are able to help with, heck, sometimes we can’t help but we are sure going to try.

I’m about as far from anti-MD as it comes in the chiropractic profession, I have absolutely no problem working with all types of medical professionals.  But there is a general trend when I refer people out for further evaluation.  If there is one pet peeve of mine this is it: we attempt care for a few visits, you get minimal benefit, primary care gets a visit, imaging takes place and then 10-12 visits to a physical therapist follow; possible specialist referral follows.  Pain may or may not still be present but I always kick myself in these cases.

I think there is a statistic to show that 99% of back pain with radicular symptoms are non-surgical cases, basically conservative care is the appropriate course of action.  So the moral of this thinking is: give chiropractic care a chance, it may take more than 2-3 visits, but what we are finding that if you give treatment a try for a week or two with visits that are close together, relief can be found.  We do a lot of the same therapies and exercises that a physical therapist can perform and most of the time imaging is not necessary, this is not intended to be anti-physical therapy, we are just able to accomplish the same results.

Most people would not want to know the statistics of the number of false positives that show up on MRI’s that indicated herniated or bulging discs.  I think research shows something like 30-40% of people are walking around with asymptomatic disc herniations.

I love imaging as much as the next guy but my underlying question for most people with some slight arm or leg numbness, does this actually change the course of action.  That is why most guidelines allow for 10-12 visits of conservative care (physical therapy or chiropractic) before imaging is allowed because as soon as imaging is performed, the odds of medical intervention (injections or surgery) increases.  As I stated before, I’m not opposed to sending people out for medical interventions but I’m getting to a point that conservative care should be given a fair shot before we lead you down that road.

If you walk into an office and the y try to sell a 6-12 month treatment plan that costs thousands of dollars, I would tell you from a personal experience, run.  I will be the first person to tell you that treatment can take several visits but it should not cost a year of your life and a good chunk of your bank account.

So when you come into our office as a new patient or with new symptoms, I may start having the conversation, give us a chance to succeed.  1-2 or even 3 visits is not necessarily a fair shot, but if you give us a couple weeks I can promise that if relief is not being found, we will attempt numerous therapies and stretches, another route will be explored.  Don’t be so quick to dismiss conservative care, it could keep you from going down a rabbit hole that will be far more expensive and painful and often times not that much more successful.

As most of the patients of Spracklin Chiropractic know, we perform DOT physicals.  We perform this service for local trucking companies, school bus drivers, persons that don’t necessarily need a CDL but need a medical card and for just people that are passing through on the interstate.  The fact that I even have to write this post is quick ridiculous in the first place.

We are told everyday from patients that come in for their physical that they are informed by their medical doctor that they are more qualified to perform the physical.  This is absolutely not true.  The federal government is in charge of making sure that providers are qualified.  We all sit through the same class and take the EXACT same test.  Heck, I know of medical providers that were not able to pass the test.  I think I was one of the first 10 people in the state to be certified back in 2013. So, if someone tells you that our clinic is not qualified to perform the exam, I’ll call BS every time.

Now, I will concede that there are people that need to see the primary care provider to perform this exam, as they have health conditions that need to be monitored more closely than we can provide in our office.  If you have underlying heart or internal issues that need to be followed up with by a specialist, then more documentation may be necessary.

I initially took the Medical Examiner course because I thought it looked like an interesting topic for continuing education hours.  A couple of weeks after I took the course, I took the test in Council Bluffs, as it was not offered around here, and passed the first try in about an hour.  I did my fair share of studying but got through it.  I never had any intention of doing as many physicals as I do, but come to find out, I’m ecstatic that I do.

Medical exams give me a break throughout the day and make you think about other health concerns not related to back pain.  With the new office in Kearney, I essentially have a dedicated room where I perform these exams.  The Minden office is in the same situation.

I have now reached the point where I’m embracing the fact that I want to actually expand the amount of DOT physicals that I perform.  The issue arises from that fact that the area that I live in, there is a finite population in an area that is only so big for the number of providers to go around. So in order to have more people come in to our office, they are going to not go to other offices.  Trust me, I don’t want to do them all day long but if I could do 2-3 more a week, this is what I’m aiming for.

We do not perform drug testing in the offices.  I’m actually certified to perform them, but have absolutely no desire to perform them.  This is a service that I outsource.

When a patient walks in and needs a DOT physical, we perform the exam and get everything ready to go.  It’s not a crazy comment to hear when the person says, that’s the most in depth physical that I have ever had for a DOT physical.  This is a little nutty for me because I look at it as “Aren’t we all supposed to be doing this?”

So, if your provider ever tells you that they are more qualified to perform a CDL examination, by all means let them perform your exam but just know, we can provide the same physical in a shorter time period for nearly half the cost of most clinics.  I have a National Registry number just like everyone else that performs these and would feel honored to perform a physical for you or your company.

Acupuncture is one of those therapies that a lot of people do not really know that I even perform.  I decided that I should at least spend a little time discussing a bit of the education process and how we utilize it in our offices.

Acupuncture is based on ancient Chinese medicine and meridians with the understanding that there is an energy flow through your body with different organs and meridians affecting different aspects of the body and how this affects your overall health.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I had to learn the meridians while in my course work and the different energy flows as did most chiropractors that took the acupuncture courses while they were in school.

Do we necessarily use the needles in this way, 90% of the time we do.  There are specific points and meridians that are utilized to treat specific conditions.  The ones that are used in our offices most commonly are for low back pain, headaches, sciatic type pains and specific joint type pain, you as the patient may not even realize that they are a meridian because they normally correlate to the pain areas. 

Calls come in every once in a while to inquire if we treat conditions such as smoking cessation or infertility issues.  I avoid these types of cases in regards to acupuncture. They can be very tricky and time consuming with somewhat mixed results.  I very rarely will tackle conditions or problems that I am not comfortable with.  There are doctors that practice acupuncture that will address these issues, but in our offices we avoid these things.

Patients will ask every once in a while, what is the difference in dry needling vs acupuncture.  Philosophy is the main answer but it is essentially accomplishing the same thing in my mind.  We use one time use, sterile needles that are disposed of after every patient, to treat everything from trigger points, tight muscles and nerve type pain with very good results. 

This is a very safe and somewhat relaxing therapy that we offer.  I use guide tubes, so the only real thing that you feel on a consistent basis is the guide tube being pushed against the skin.  The points that we use don’t change all that much and a lot of times we add in electric stimulation as a therapy, just so you as the patient actually “feel” something for the 15-20 minutes that you are waiting. 

While I cannot guarantee that acupuncture will help everyone that walks in the office, it is the one therapy that we offer that we encourage people to return for multiple treatments as one treatment is rarely enough to do much of a difference.  Patients generally know within a visit or two if it is going to be beneficial for them and their condition.

Insurance does not normally cover acupuncture, so it is a cash service but for some patients it’s the best money you can spend as it can speed up the healing process in numerous conditions.  If you or someone you know would like to try this as a treatment, let the office know and we can discuss options to see if acupuncture is the therapy you have been missing.

This is going to be a lengthy, rambling written blog about the current state of the practice, how 2020 treated the offices and what we envision for 2021 and beyond. The start of 2020 was honestly pretty mundane, January and February were pretty average months but as soon as March and April rolled around, the bottom pretty much fell out.

The calendar turned over to May and things leveled out fairly quickly.  While there was nothing normal about 2020, the summer, fall and into the end of the year, the practice was about as normal as it could get.  New patients, DOT physicals and return visits were all a constant throughout the year, minus March and April.

For the past three years, we have essentially grown out of the Kearney office location but we couldn’t really find a good spot that would fit our needs until a building popped up in the fall that we essentially couldn’t turn down, well we initially discussed it and said no way as it was going to be too much work.  It was far from perfect and lots of work would have to go into it but ultimately it would be the best long term decision for Spracklin Chiropractic.  So 5 days after the birth of my second son, Drew, we closed on a building on 27^th and Central in Kearney to move the Kearney location into.  There is no intention of changing the schedule but we just needed a larger more patient friendly space that is more conducive to patient and practice growth.

A cold laser was purchased this year as well as we felt that it would add a little different type of therapy to the offices.  We hope that the new Kearney office will allow us to expand the acupuncture part of the practice along with always hoping to do more DOT physicals.  We feel that we provide a great value for pain relief in Minden and Kearney and hope to continue to do so.

Now on to 2021, there will be some slight changes to how the offices operate.  As many of you know, I was basically a one man show in Kearney but we have made the determination that help was necessary.  So Marty, who has worked in the Minden office for 30-some years, will make the transition to run the Kearney office for me.  Carol, who has also been in the Minden office for 30-some years, will be running the Minden office for me and the gang will be back together on Friday’s in Minden.  Please have patience with us over the next couple of weeks as we work out some of the kinks that go along with transition.

When I purchased the Minden practice, there were a few things that I wanted to change but as the years have gone I have found that the way Roy Wakefield ran the office is exactly what patients want and value.  So there will be a few more added little tweaks to the Kearney office now that I have help implementing some of these things.

Starting January 5^th, we will be opening up the new Kearney location. While not completely finished, it will be operational and functional from day one.  There will be some small projects that finish up the project over the next couple of weeks but I am beyond excited to finally get into the building.

2020 was a bear of a year, we had numerous ups and down.  The end of March and April were probably some of the lowest times that the practice has been through. May through the rest of the year was chaotic but we plugged away and had a fairly good year.  We purchased a building, had a child and were able to keep just a little bit of sanity throughout the year.

2021….we look to utilize the new building in Kearney in hope to expanding numerous portions of the office, acupuncture and DOT physicals to name a few. Bumps in the road will be had but once everything is going, I’m pretty sure it will all be worth it. We cannot thank our patients enough for a successful 2020 even as if most of our worlds were turned upside down.  It ended up being an okay year business wise and a wonderful year for the Spracklin family as we now have two happy healthy little boys.

We look forward to seeing everyone in the new year and just remember to give us a little patience these first couple of weeks as we iron out some wrinkles.

As I sit in my basement in the wee morning hours, I sit and ponder, how did I get to a place where I have an absolutely wonderful wife, two beautiful little boys, a nice house and a practice that I love and have confidence in. As those close to me know, I have a hard time shutting my mind down and winding down enough to relax, so I sit and think about this stuff.

While it is a little redundant, I do think it helps to sit down every once in a while and take inventory of your life to evaluate where you are at, where you have been and where you hope to be in the coming years.  While I cannot complain about where I am at in my life, there are certainly things that I will change as the years go on and there are definitely things that I would have changed along the way.  But every choice has a consequence, good or bad, you have to live with it, mine haven’t been so bad.

I have a new found love and respect for the FIRE movement, it’s a financial movement where people want to become financially independent and retire early.  While I can’t say that I want to retire early, as I truly do love what I do and operating a business is kind of a rush and thrill to me. But the intriguing part is to become financially independent.  I say this as I just went more in to debt to purchase another building to work out of but I think long term I will be much happier and saner.

The point of the FIRE movement and this post overall is to see what exactly people mean by success.  For some people within the movement living in a camper, traveling the country, living on next to nothing and seeing the sunrise in a different place every day is their definition of success.  If you ask me, this would be a nightmare for me; I am a home body that loves routine.  Ask my mother-in-law, my quirkiness translates into my oldest son and she can see the tendencies coming out.

Everyone’s definition of success will look a little different, there are people that find contentment in minimalism and not having a care in the world.  I actually find comfort in having a little something but having control over what I do on a day to day basis.  Getting to work at an hour that I am comfortable with and leaving when the day is done is refreshing for, I don’t have to punch the clock and work for the man.  While I do become envious of that lifestyle every once in a while because you are able to just leave everything behind at work and go on with your life.  When you own a business, everything kind of revolves around that.  If I’m sick or want a vacation, there is no PTO or benefits, you just don’t make any money.

Chiropractors are no different than anyone else.  Some want to work 2-3 days a week, see a few patients, have a few nice things, do what they want to do and are perfectly happy with this set up.  Me on the other hand, I don’t know if I get this from my parents or not, but I consider myself a grinder.  I enjoy going into the office, working 4-5 days a week, staying busy throughout the day and getting up and doing this day after day.  I would drive my wife crazy if I were home all the time, I don’t really having any hobbies, I like to work and golf and now 2 little boys are going to start taking over my life as well.

While I would like to think that I am at a really good place in my life and I would like to think that my success makes me happy and thankful.  I also step back to think that the things that I have would make some people miserable, either good or bad.  I’m just going to sit back on a long Thanksgiving weekend and be thankful for my family’s blessings and health, as I know millions of people around the country are not as fortunate as the Spracklin’s this year.