First let me open by saying this post is going to be a little short on offering much in the way of tips or useful advice.\u00a0\u00a0 (I can already hear the sarcastic, “So what else is new” comments rolling in . . . so spare me.) \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
In all seriousness I want to throw some random thoughts out there about something I’m sure we all experience in our chiropractic\u00a0practices.\u00a0 We’ve all had those times when for whatever reason we keep seeing the same symptom or complaint.\u00a0 I find it absolutely astonishing how\u00a0symptoms\u00a0and musculoskeltal complaints can sometimes\u00a0roll\u00a0into a chiropractic office\u00a0with amazing\u00a0patterns\u00a0and predictability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now before someone\u00a0jumps on me for not being a\u00a0“principled chiropractor”, let me just state:<\/p>\n
I KNOW\u00a0Chiropractic\u00a0isn’t\u00a0about\u00a0chasing symptoms.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n That being said, how many times a year do you have one of\u00a0those<\/em> weeks?You know the weeks I’m referring to.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Those<\/em> weeks where you already\u00a0KNOW what the next patient’s chief complaint is.\u00a0 Let me\u00a0give you an example.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n A few months back I had the great\u00a0left sacro-iliac pain pandemic of 2009.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 For\u00a0some unknown\u00a0reason everyone had sacro-iliac joint pain….but not JUST<\/span>\u00a0left SIJ pain. Oh no. That wouldn’t have been strange enough.\u00a0 To\u00a0make the universe\u00a0even more\u00a0mysterious, this was the great\u00a0localized LEFT-UPPER sacro-iliac joint pain pandemic of 2009.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Now I said everyone and I was of course exaggerating.\u00a0 However, I’m not kidding when I say\u00a060-75% of patients came in complaining of left\u00a0SI joint pain.\u00a0 Now\u00a0I could blow this off if\u00a0these patients had something in common.\u00a0 They didn’t.\u00a0 Maybe they\u00a0were friends, co-workers, or had other similarities. Nope.\u00a0 I could even disregard this occurence if it was the first\u00a0time I’ve experienced something similar.\u00a0\u00a0It wasn’t.<\/p>\n Two \u00a0to three\u00a0times a year I have one of these strange\u00a0stretches where I SWEAR\u00a0I’ve somehow stepped into\u00a0a chiropractic Bermuda triangle.\u00a0 “Can you point with one finger to where\u00a0it hurts?” [Insert the themesong from The Twighlight Zone<\/span>\u00a0 here]<\/p>\n The past two weeks have been\u00a0no\u00a0exception.\u00a0 I\u00a0have now\u00a0reached what I can only\u00a0hope is the conclusion of the\u00a0great right lower cervical\/upper trapezius pain and\u00a0stiffness epidemic of 2009-2010.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n For the past\u00a02 weeks\u00a0I had about an 80% chance\u00a0of being\u00a0correct if I bet the next patient to walk through the door would\u00a0have a chief complaint of\u00a0pain and\u00a0stiffness in the right lower\u00a0cervical spine\u00a0and \u00a0right upper trapezius area.\u00a0 WEIRD!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I am continually amazed when I try to figure out just\u00a0why<\/em> things run in these coincidental outbreaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n I thought I had it outsmarted.\u00a0 I was confident I could narrow this down to all of my right sided sleepers, or my Nintendo Wii bowlers, or my right handed coffee drinking knitters, or my snow shovelling patients, or my manual transmission drivers.\u00a0 To my dismay all of\u00a0these theories were proven incorrect.<\/p>\n There has to be more going on here but I can’t figure it out!\u00a0 Nor can\u00a0I afford to hire the staff of HOUSE M.D.<\/span> to figure\u00a0it out\u00a0for me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For the sake of my sanity, and to avoid stumbling into conspiracy theory land, I give up!<\/strong><\/p>\n Instead I’m\u00a0seizing this opportunity to coin what I believe is a new phrase and a new concept in chiropractic:<\/p>\n “Symptom Trending.”<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n If you use Twitter<\/a> or other social media websites, you are probably already familiar with the concept of trending.\u00a0 If you aren’t, let me explain.\u00a0 The easiest definition is to say “trending” is the concept of describing what the most popular topic of the day or moment is.\u00a0 If everyone is talking about the movie Avatar<\/span>, or the cost of a gallon of gas..these are “trending”. \u00a0Holy cow…I managed to teach some of you something in this post after all!<\/p>\n I proudly proclaim myself the inventor, founder,\u00a0and developer of the concept of\u00a0chiropractic symptom trending.\u00a0 FIRST! So feel free to comment\u00a0or email<\/a> to let me know\u00a0let me know what symptoms are trending at your practice. (And don’t say accounts recievable because\u00a0that’s not my area!)<\/p>\n