THE THRILL OF A VOLUME PRACTICE Tom Morgan, D.C .. VolumeDC@aol.com www.VolumePractice.com It happened one day almost by accident. I was not a big man on campus, but rather I dimmed and paled as part of the few at Palmer who stepped into their doctorate program right out of high school. Forty two years later the moment still gleams as the crown jewel of my coming out point to manhood. It happened at midway, in seventh quarter. I had this new instructor - Dr. Charlie Boyd, whose reputation as having a large practice in Ohio preceeded him to Palmer. He had not been at school very long, but rumor told us that he had messed up out in those wide, lonely spaces of practice because his demons kept him imbibing in strong spirits. Dr. Boyd was not like all my other instructors. He possessed something I longed with all my heart to have. It was something no student had. One thing was certain from the first day, he took charge of all of us. Not only could he teach, but he had one of those endless capacities for knowledge, and knew how to make you hunger for that day you would become more than a student. He teamed up with the always energetic Virgil Strang at his after-school practice over on Locust Street. "Limpy" (as Dr. Boyd was affectionately known) carried the heaviest brief case known to man on campus. Watching him walk painfully on a large built up shoe only added to the esteem and pride we all felt toward him as he presented the endless pages of daily notes. Post Polio Syndrome and a short, slight frame never daunted the magnitude and power of his spirit. He was impeccably dressed in a different tailor-made suit each day, and I would slow my pace on the worn marble stairs of the classroom building and watch Charlie swing that brown bag one step at a time to the top. The volume practice he showed Dr. Strang how to build was already legendary. Suddenly, the usual small, student filled, after-school practice became the largest practice in a city full of Palmer graduates. We all knew Dr. Boyd was adjusting patients until midnight but his energy and preparation for our class never suffered. He was an obsessed man with chiropractic and I was certain his focus was to make us the best there ever was. His class - Bacteriology - was known to be one of those water shed classes that defined whether you went any further in your education. The "bugs" from the microbe community seem to jump off the page and into my memory. That was no problem, because it was feeling the unseen dedication for his practice that plumbed the bottomless pit of my desire. It was at this time, and this instructor, that turned me to my profession with fierce desire and anticipation that only youth and blind faith could muster. I did not have to work like most of my older married classmates did, so I spent every moment I could in night clinic. While others counted credit points, I was counting cured patients - I had found the secret to health; where it originates, and how to help sick people get well. All I wanted was the most subluxated and sickest people in the city to be my patients. I was enthralled with the innate concept that Palmer taught. It revitalized my spiritual senses and promoted my mission to a sick, ignorant, drug infested world. Most of my search for patients started at the downtown bus station where the homeless of the day spent their rudderless lives. It was one of these unwashed persons I was meeting that day, at 7:00 A.M. in the college lab for a fasting blood sugar test. Romie was to be my "Harvey Lillard" story. He was taking three insulin injections a day when he was sober, and I was certain innate could change his life when I turned the power on with my adjustment. Unable to hold a job, he seldom went to his meager home where his family would not welcome him. It was that morning, before my eight o嬈lock class, when I was to meet my favorite clinic instructor, Dr. Joe Phillips, who would grade Romie廣 first adjustment. I rolled in on T-10. It moved deeply and loudly. It felt "set". Then I toggled his Atlas with the most torque and speed a chiropractor ever possessed. Romie did come off all his insulin and alcohol. He eventually would get a job and returned to his family during that fateful year. But it was that moment after that first adjustment, on that fateful morning that changed my life forever. I sat Romie up on the side posture table and in my halting, barely adult voice, I explained what I had done to his vertebrae and his life. My words seem to be far off - even outside me. I was aware that I was speaking, but I do not remember to this day what I said. It was not what I was saying anyway, but a grand feeling welling up inside of me. It was a positive sense of being in the will of God for my life. Across my mind a sentence appeared that would stay with me to this moment in time. It contained a thought, a precept, a beacon of faith that I would hold dear and from which I would never stray. I knew that "I believed in, and loved chiropracTIC more than any student in that school." Others lived in those dark corners of doubt and trepidation. Not me. I would fail to reach my expectations, and patients would sometimes not respond, but I would never doubt chiropracTIC. To this day, I can trace any decline in my practice, or desire, or lack of focus, to a waning point on this gift of faith. It was a simple thought - but it was rock solid. Sitting across from Romie that morning, in that small adjusting room, I felt joy. I wanted to hold it in a sacred embrace forever. When I was a child and I was shown a picture of an elephant. I said "what廣 dat?" When told it was an elephant, and later seeing one at the zoo, I never doubted. It was this child-like certainty that I would carry with me from Palmer. I became a real chiropracTOR at that moment. My voice was still high and amateurish as I later talked to people about chiropractic. But, patients overflowed my student practice. I was told it the largest ever built in student clinic at that time. You see, no one could undo my love, my passion and belief for the philosophy of truth I carried. I understood chiropractic廣 place in history, I knew that TIC was the only buffer to the drug culture and I was to dedicate my life廣 work to a higher cause than myself. I became fearless, it did not matter what condition people had, my adjustment could make a difference, I felt gifted, I could clear out my patients, I was fully surrendered to my practice. I would risk everything to offer hope, to encourage people to try chiropractic, it was new, I was new, the future opened wider with each thought of the endless possibilities where I was needed. I felt in complete possession of my time with patients and had perfect faith in my skills and instincts. What I was guarding was this secret moment with Romie, to be alive in the moment, open to every patient and every condition, and to repeat this moment over and over again. (Today, if you feel weak in your practice, it may be because you got out of your TOR "position". Maybe you just need to be more "solid" on your gift of faith.) Later, when I was adjusting hundreds of patients a day in Mississippi, as I laid my hands on their spine, I would only have to talk to those subluxations (Touch & Tell System) and miracles would happen. Clarence Gonstead was flying his plane down to Davenport, teaching the instructors his full spine technique. BJ had died during my second year and Dave Palmer was creating a college. It had been almost three decades since full spine adjusting was even mentioned in a positive way, let alone taught on campus. Dr. G. knew the thrill of a volume practice. All of us wanted to be just like him. Doug Cox, Jim Stoner, Mac Alden and other classmates would never leave his side. After opening my first practice, I was searching for a mentor. I needed someone who could coach me onward to a purpose bigger than myself. I was praying for a wife who would feel this same way. I found both. Isn廠 God good? I wanted to experience the thrill of a volume practice. I fiercely wanted to stand in those trenches alongside my adjusting table for as long as possible, to see how far this would carry me.