>> I think what I love the most is being able
to make a difference in my patient's lives.
It's kind of, as corny as
that sounds, it's true.
The opportunity to take someone who's in
pain, whether it be, hey, Shawna had neck pain
for a year, my knee's been hurting me for three
months, or I had low back pain for 10 years,
and then be the individual, the clinician
who can help alleviate their symptoms.
In addition to pain alleviation or
modulation, you know, the way you want to look
at what we do is it's our jobs
to attempt to bring patients back
to their prior level of function.
So now you have a college kid on this campus
who can't play track or play basketball
or can't even sit in class, and after
treatment, they're back to studying,
they're back to playing intramural
basketball, they have their lives back.
So I really, really enjoy that.
In addition to that, as I mentioned
previously, just the detective work.
You know, the critical thinking
that goes into trying to figure
out why someone is in your office.
So you're always using your brain, you're
always up to being on top of your game.
If you forget things or a patient presents
with something that you've never seen before,
having to kind of do your research
and your homework in between visits.
So it causes you to really use your brain and
use your mind, which I really enjoy doing.
Well the challenges can be
the challenging patients.
So there are those individuals,
and funny enough,
sometimes the most straightforward cases
can become the more challenging ones
because you [inaudible] with the patient
and you think oh, this is easy, slam dunk.
I know exactly what's going on
here, this should be no problem.
And then a month or two later,
they're not getting any better.
So sometimes, that can be very
perplexing because it's like, you know,
I know why they're here, I
know why they're hurting.
Why isn't what I am doing working?
But, in addition, just the very complex
patients, an individual who has low back pain
with a history of cancer or you know, someone
who has shoulder pain and they have, you know,
heart disease and they have chest
pain and they have multiple,
what we call coronal [inaudible]
other conditions or diseases.
Or they just have a very complex
presentation in terms of why,
in terms of the way they are
presenting in regards to their pain.
So I think that challenges can
be just dealing with someone
who is not progressing the way
in which we'd like them to.
Another challenge with our profession is
just it's a very high paced profession.
So in any one day, I may see 20, 14, 15,
to 20 patients in one day in the clinic.
So from the time you get there, you're
going to hit the ground running.
So you have to be able to handle a very busy
pace, a pace and schedule and a very busy load.