My story

So the last time I posted, I promised to tell you how I got hooked into the world of upper cervical chiropractic, specifically NUCCA. The question is...where to start. I guess the beginning would be a great place!

I was studying at UBC when I first started becoming interested in what most people would consider alternative health care: herbology, aromatherapy, naturopathy, and chiropractic to name a few. At this point, I was still undecided as to which branch of health care I was going to pursue. But before I could even complete my Bachelor's degree, I began suffering from daily debilitating headaches. I began sleeping 14-16 hours a day, skipping classes and suffering from extremely low levels of energy. I could barely function! I ended up on months of anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxant medication during these 4 months. For some reason, chiropractic treatments were never brought up. I saw a physiotherapist, my dentist and orthodontist but I never saw a chiropractor. Through sheer will, luck and great friends, I managed to graduate from UBC one semester late. I was still suffering from headaches, but as my stress level decreased, so did the frequency and severity of my headaches. At about the same time, my mother began seeing a chiropractor for various reasons and it was while accompanying my mother on these chiropractic visits that my interest in chiropractic was really born. I decided to go to chiropractic school and so began my chiropractic adventure.

March 5, 2001. The first day of chiropractic school at Palmer College in Davenport, Iowa. I must admit I was rather nervous that first week what with moving to a strange city and starting a new school knowing absolutely no one. It was the first time I was all alone. I was lucky though, and made some great friends during that first week. It's great being a Canadian and having that one commonality made things so much easier to get to know people! Anyway, back to how I got involved in NUCCA.

As you can imagine, my stress levels increased again with the study and course load. What student isn't stressed in school? Luckily, as chiropractic students, we had the opportunity to free chiropractic care at the school and so my headaches were pretty manageable. Up until my 4th academic trimester. I had gone home for a quick little vacation after my first year at Palmer and during that time, I suffered my 6th car accident. I didn't think anything of it since it was just a bit of a bump with no damage to the car, but as I now know, those types of accidents are the worst kind! Instead of having the vehicle absorb the force and take the damage, your body does instead! So I headed back to school to start the 2nd year without really knowing how much damage had truely been done.

During this 4th semester, my daily excruciating headaches came back. My school work began to suffer and no matter how often I was getting adjusted in the clinic, the headaches would be back within the hour. In fact, 45 minutes after getting adjusted, I was already out of alignment and could be adjusted again! Luckily for me, one of my professors was a NUCCA patient and introduced me to a NUCCA chiropractor just off campus. I took her advice and made an appointment with Dr. Arp and those first few visits changed my life.

I went from holding my adjustment for mere minutes to weeks at a time! Plus my headaches decreased in frequency and severity so quickly I knew I had found the technique I wanted to share with my future patients. For me, going from daily headaches, to no headaches at all (unless I was starting to lose my alignment) was my little miracle. Thank you Mrs. Bonnie Smith for telling me about NUCCA and to you, Dr. Cynthia Arp for helping so much! You changed the course of my life!

Blog Re-creation

So, I'm setting up this new blog, to get my message out and to keep a log of the little miracles that happen in my day-to-day life as a chiropractic doctor. It'll be a little reminder of why I'm doing this and why others should know about chiropractic and its different forms.

First off I guess I should tell you a little about myself:

I'm Dr. Franchesca Lee, DC. I practice in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta in the Northwest quadrant of the city. I practice a form of chiropractic called NUCCA which stands for the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association.

In essence, NUCCA is NOT a crack and pop type of technique most people think of when they think of chiropractic. It's a very specific technique that has worked wonders on me and several of my patients. In the 5 years I've been in practice (though I did take a year hiatus due to a ruptured achilles), Ive seen so many little miracles I thought I'd better write some of it down in case I ever get jaded or forget why I'm doing this.

Let's see...I've helped a 25 year old guy get back to work after suffering a disc herniation, helped a woman with jaw pain which wouldn't go away after 10 years (who also saw a visible improvement in her eyesight after the first adjustment which I thought was really cool!) and my latest case:

A 60 year old retired RN. She had to retire 20 years ago after helping a patient. She suffered a disc herniation and has pretty much been having pain and numbness in her back and right leg and foot. Bad enough that she has to use a walker, spends most of her time lying down as even sitting for 5 minutes causes her excruciating pain, was admitted into the hospital for 2 weeks (recently) for pain management and prescribed medication even stronger than morphine! Anyway, I've had her for a patient for the past 3 weeks now. She's down-graded her walker to a cane and best of all has gone from insanely strong pain medication to NONE at all!!! Pretty sweet huh? And all without cracking the neck. Thank you NUCCA!

All I can say now is NUCCA's done some amazing stuff...I think my next blog will be how NUCCA helped me. In the meantime, feel free to check out some NUCCA information at the following links:

www.crowwestwellness.ca/nucca
www.nucca.org
www.upcspine.com

Thanks for reading!