Shortly after returning from a competition tour I began having some sinus headaches and my training started to plateau a bit-I had kept a training journal since I started lifting in 1978 and tracked my progress very carefully. The headaches were not bad--just annoying and so I went to the Navy dispensary and was given some medications. The meds worked like magic, except they gave me severe diarrhea. I went back to the doctor and was given additional drugs to stop that. That went away, but then I experienced severe dehydration and was admitted to the hospital. After many tests, I walked out with 3 more prescriptions.
My health rapidly begin to spiral downward and soon I was spending my days at the hospital going from one doctor to the next. Within a month I was taking 18 drugs a day--which amounted to about 80 individual pills. I quickly become homebound and disabled--unable to work, drive a car or really do much of anything. The only food I could keep down was applesauce and sometimes apple cobbler---Most nights, I would get a blanket and a pillow and just sleep with the pillow on the toilet because the dry heaves would begin around 1am and would last until sun-up. On good nights, the heaves were 4 minutes apart, on bad nights they were two minutes apart. I went from a solid 220lbs to around 165-I looked like death warmed over.
I had a meeting with the head of the Naval Hospital in Charleston in the summer of 1987. I was brought into his office and he told me that I should get my affairs in order because he felt I only had a few months to live. The news was actually a relief--I wanted to die and end the misery. I had a friend drive me to a mall later that week to buy gifts for my family for the following Christmas, knowing I was probably not going to be alive. While in a B.Dalton Bookstore, a man asked me if I was ok ( I could only walk maybe 15-20 steps before I had to stop and rest) I said I was fine, because I had gotten tired of telling everyone the story. This guy persisted a bit and he told me he was a doctor and that maybe he could help me. I told him I had seen some of the best doctors in the world and then he told me he was a Chiropractor. I think I laughed for the first time in over a year. It told him ai had "INTERNAL" health problems, not neck and back pain, which was the limit of my views on Chiropractic. He kept persisting for me to come to his clinic and about this time, my friend came up and was listening and offered to drive me to the clinic the next day. I agreed with absolutely no intention of going to this quacks office. On the drive home, my friend said something like "well you should give it a shot--what do you have to lose? And so I agreed to go.
I went to the office the next day and did the whole new patient process--the doc brought me into the exam room and began doing his exam--I was about as skeptical as you could be when all of a sudden, he says 'hey keith, did you have a bedwetting problem as a kid"…….wow...how in the world did he know that? I did...classic bedwetting case for most of my childhood….4-5 nights a week. Never spent the night with a friend--EVER--kind of grew out of it by the time I was 15-16 but my parents spent all kinds of money on therapies and treatments…...How could this quack have known about that….He tells me he can tell from examining my lumbar spine and he started talking about the bladder and nerves…..ok, he had my attention--if he pulled that one out of his butt..well it was a good one. He ended up adjusting me the first day and sent me home with instructions to return.
I woke up the next morning with a stiff and sore neck, actually my entire back was sore--not severe pain, but just very sore. I knew this guy was a quack, I thought to myself--he hurts me yesterday and today he is going to fix me up---sorry, aint buying it---no more Chiropractic visits for me. I shaved, showered and got dressed and as I was walking down the hall to the kitchen---I was hit with a ton of bricks---I had just slept through the entire night-for the first time in about 15 months...I had just showered, etc. and was not wiped out with fatigue…..I was even a bit hungry. So went into the kitchen and made some scrambled eggs (which I love) and had been unable to eat for over a year. I sat down on the couch and waited for breakfast to come back up--it never did.
I continued getting adjusted and flushed the meds within the first week---it was not short term miraculous, but each day I get a bit stronger and could do more things--it was huge victory to be able to walk out to the mailbox and get the mail. Within two weeks I was driving again, within two months I was back in the gym training and ended up far surpassing my previous lifts. But I could not figure out what Chiropractic had done for me---I would ask the doc and got sort of a vague answer. I ended up going to Chiropractic orientations at other offices in the area in hopes of figuring this all out, but I was disappointed in that all of the NPO's I attended were "spinal hygiene classes" --how to lift right, bend your knees, drink water, etc.
I have had the chance to speak all over North America to thousands of people each year and been blessed by their letters of testimony once they receive Chiropractic care. I thank you for taking the time to read this and may it encourage you to get your spine checked and adjusted today to help save your life tomorrow.
Keith Wassung
Charleston, SC
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