Why do it?

Your staff will betray you, sooner or later they will meet someone on myspace and leave your ass with a full patient load and no one to run scans, help with rehab, or route practice members for adjustments.

Your insurance company relationships will be a joke. They don't want to pay, they don't acknowledge chiropractic, they make it as hard as they possibly can for you to get reimbursed. All this despite the documented fact that you are saving them millions with every full day of adjusting.

Your personal injury cases will go to hell. Money will sour your patient relationships, bargaining and re-bargaining will make you feel like an expensive prostitute.

M.D.s? Please. You will be as much colleagues as the Cubs are to the Cardinals. Same game, different breed of player.

Long hours, stress, bills, all factors in your practice as a chiropractor.

So why do it?

Because you are a friggin' doctor man. Because some crappy Thursday while you are stuck in the office someones mom calls the office and she is out of her mind. She has called every doctor in town and been to the ER twice. Her kid can't breathe well and the drugs aren't working. She heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that you help kids and hopes you can help. You put off lunch to wait while she races to the office. When they get there you can tell she is absolutely losing it, fully caught up between having some witch doctor crack on her baby and the long, labored breathing of the child.

You begin to talk about what it is chiropractors do but she isn't there, she can't hear a word you are saying. Her kid is in trouble and she is dying on the inside. You abandon the formalities and begin the assessment. Once you are done with your assessment you tell her what you think you should do and you deliver the adjustment of your life.

Ka-boom.

The skies open up, angels descend, junior's soft, dilated pupils snap to focus sharply on you. Suddenly, the kid is there. The mother cannot believe her eyes. The accessory muscles in the neck go soft and the child takes a breath as deep and long as spring.

It is a long, long time before you can stop smiling. That's why I do it.