The Importance of Chiropractic Care in Children
By Richard A. Pistolese
October 1996

The following essay won first place in the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA) scholarship competition, held during its Pediatric Extravaganza in June.

It was a long delivery, not without complications. The girl was young, seventeen to be exact. The baby was large, maybe too large for the five feet, one hundred fifteen pound girl. After many exhausting hours, the baby was finally ready. Getting the baby out was another problem. The doctor decided to use forceps. It was the only way. Alas, out he came screaming, crying, and traumatized.

The girl, now a mother, was very happy. Her baby was nearly eight pounds. Considered to be a very healthy weight at that time. He grew rapidly, as babies do. However, the child seemed to catch colds very easily and was slow to recover. Doctors concurred that the child had asthma, the reason he seemed to get bronchitis so easily. A year later, pneumonia.

One day when calling the child, the mother noticed he did not respond. It seemed odd to her. "No way he could not hear me," she thought to herself. She promptly made arrangements to see the pediatrician. A middle ear infection the doctor said, caused by an obvious allergy to milk and dairy products. "Keep the child off dairy, put this sulfa based antibiotic cream in his ear, and all will be fine." And so it went.

At around six years old, the child started to get migraine headaches. Noise severely aggravated the pain. Light was excruciating. "He is getting these headaches as a result of getting milk with the school lunches" said the doctor. "Make sure he stays away from dairy products." The bouts of bronchitis persisted. When they were absent, there was an unhealthy wheeze there to remind all that he had asthma.

Christmas was the day the boy dreamed about. He was now seven years old. He had asked Santa for a bicycle. The new Huffys looked just like motorcycles. When he woke up on Christmas morning there it was! The new Huffy. Opening presents revealed that Santa had left a speedometer, and a lead light too. Now it really would look like a motorcycle.

The joy of the day however was overcome by the pain of the migraine. The boy seemed to be getting worse. Lately he had been falling in to deep sleep whenever the migraines struck. Today was no different. He seemed to drop where he stood, in the middle of whatever he was doing, playing next to his new bike.

Boom! So loud it echoed through the house like a gunshot. Everyone scrambled to see what happened. Evidently, Santa had overfilled the tires of the new bike. It exploded when the heat went on. The boy was only a foot or two away from the tire when it burst, but never heard the noise. He still lay sleeping.

"That is it!" The father explained. "There is no way this is an allergy to dairy products." The next day an appointment was made to see a specialist in New York. From there to a surgeon in New Jersey, an ENT who specialized in pediatrics. It was determined that the boy had lost ninety percent of his hearing in his right ear. A middle ear tumor seemed to be the cause. Surgery was performed two days later and the boy was sent home after that.

A year later and the symptoms were back. Now he had begun to lose hearing in his left ear. A second surgery was performed only to find the tumor had returned. A further exploratory showed a second tumor behind the first. There never was an allergy to dairy products.

The boy grew into a man. Learning along the way to compensate for his hearing loss. Sitting in the front row of the class. Paying close attention to see the teacher's mouth, reading the words he could not hear. Usually catching bronchitis with the change of seasons.

After a car accident, the boy, now a man, began to see a chiropractor. He learned of a new way of health care. A new philosophy of health and living which strangely seemed to mirror his own philosophy.

That there is within each person a power to heal the body. That this power, innate intelligence, traveled along the nervous system throughout the entire body. A misaligned vertebra impinging on a nerve (a subluxation) could hinder neural impulses traveling from the brain to the periphery, thus affecting the function of every system of the human body. Especially the immune system.

For the next year, while getting regular chiropractic care, there was no bronchitis. This was the longest he had ever gone without being stricken. Under chiropractic care the changes he noticed were amazing.

The more he learned about chiropractic, the harder it became to continue his job as a salesman. Finally, he quit to become a chiropractic assistant in his chiropractor's office. A year and a half later, he was at Life College. He had to be a chiropractor.

Radiographs were taken, as was normal procedure. There was an anomaly at the first vertebra of the spinal column. Not terribly uncommon, but still not normal. The boy took the films to one of his instructors, a crusty old fossil of a chiropractor, but a man with a lot of knowledge and a good heart. He was considered to be a pioneer by many.

He looked at the films carefully and then spoke, "You see this, it is a ponticulus ponticus. You have had an atlas subluxation since birth. The arcuate fibers of the transverse ligament have ossified in attempt to stabilize the area." He went on to say, "You have probably had ear problems and asthma." The boy was speechless. How could he know that from an X-ray?

How or why? He knew because he had years of experience, had cared for thousands of children. He knew the importance of chiropractic care in children. In that brief second the old sage had also taught the boy the importance of chiropractic care in children.

If the boy had been brought to a chiropractor, maybe there would not have been ear troubles. If a chiropractor would have offered to adjust the boy maybe there would not have been the bouts of bronchitis. What if the power that made the body, that heals the body, could have flowed uninterrupted? What if the subluxation received at birth would have been corrected? If only someone would have told the woman about chiropractic. Think of the changes that could have been made in that boy's life. In the lives of thousands of children like him.

As a chiropractic student I am uniquely qualified to tell the world of the importance of chiropractic care in children. As you may have guessed already, that little boy I wrote of is the writer of this report. You see I am not one of the miracles cases in chiropractic. I cannot dazzle the public with tales of healing my body has done under chiropractic care. Though I wish I could. I can barely even attest to what chiropractic can do, though I have personally seen some incredible changes achieved by those under chiropractic care.

What I can attest to is what can happen if a subluxation received at birth is left uncorrected. I can attest to how a little boy's life can be altered because he did not have chiropractic care. I can attest to the pain, the sickness, the fear. I can attest to the fact that it does not have to be this way.

You see while other children made snowmen, I could not. I would get sick. While other children passed innocent notes in the back of class, I could not. I could not hear what the teacher said if I sat in the back. I learned why I seemed to talk louder than other children. Why I could not distinguish the sounds of different notes in music. I learned why I could let nothing stand in my way to achieving the goals I set for myself. I learned to overcome obstacles. Not let fear rule my life. I learned how important the expression of life was.

Most importantly, I learned that as a chiropractor I need to reach out to all people. To help the children of this world by correcting subluxation. To find the parents of the world who do not know what chiropractic is and explain it to them. To take away the interference that hinders the full expression of life throughout the human body. To show them what a profound affect it can have in their lives, and the lives of their children as well.

When we affect the lives of children, we affect the lives of the future, and thus the future itself. Chiropractic care is a large part of that beautiful new future. Health, the expression of life, and love are a part of that beautiful new future. As chiropractors that is what we can give back to the future for the many great things we have been given.

I believe we reap what we sow. So I am sowing the seeds of health through chiropractic care. I will plant my seeds in the most fertile soil I can find. I will plant them where they will prosper, and bear the seeds of new life. I will do my best as a chiropractor to share with all I meet, the importance of chiropractic care in children.