What is your name?
Margaret along with my son, Melanthios.
How long have you been coming to our office? How did you hear about us?
I have been a patient since 2014 and Melanthios has been a patient since 2018 when he was 1 week old. I was referred by another patient.
What was your quality of life like before seeking chiropractic care?
My quality of life consisted of being in pain on a daily basis. My main problem was that I suffered from severe migraines. I would have up to 15 extremely painful and sometimes debilitating migraines per month. If I didn’t have a migraine, I had a strong headache or lingering pain in my head. For years, I didn’t know what it was like to have a day go by without being in pain.
What solutions did you try before coming in?
Before seeing Dr. Anna, I was under the care of a migraine institute and then a neurologist. I tried various migraine aborting drugs that were frequently effective but I was taking these too often. I was then placed on various migraine preventative drugs and felt like the doctors’ guinea pig. These drugs sometimes helped to a certain extent, but they were causing drastic changes to my body overall which included: the potential for extreme birth defects in the instance of pregnancy, de-personalization, loss of appetite and extreme weight loss, I would have difficulty speaking because I would forget the next sentence I wanted to say, and one day I almost fell asleep while walking to work. The physical abilities of my body were on a drastic decline. I knew that I needed to find something more natural to try and prevent the pain from starting and then trying to cover it up with prescribed drugs and narcotics. I wanted to feel normal and that I wasn’t constantly adding layers to my life to cover up something nasty.
How has chiropractic care helped your health and changed your quality of life?
My quality of life has drastically increased because I now live most of my days pain free and I am not calling off of work or cancelling plans with family and friends because I can’t get out of bed. Currently, I have about 1 or 2 migraines a month, and an occasional headache, and they are very manageable with prescription medication and have the ability to leave my body quickly, which they had not previously. My extreme debilitating migraines happen maybe 2 or 3 times a year instead of monthly. I can now go weeks at a time without pain. Due to experiencing this magnitude of success under chiropractic care, I continued to come on a weekly basis not only to have preventative migraine care, but to have overall preventative care or be 1-step ahead of any incoming issues.
I continued to see Dr. Anna weekly during the course of my pregnancy. I would find myself limping of wobbling into the office with strong ligament or sciatic pain. Five minutes later I’d be walking out of the office completely pain free.
When Melanthios was born, there were various issues I felt needed to be addressed with Dr. Anna. When he was born, he could not latch to breastfeed, and could only latch to to a plastic cover or a bottle. After 5 weeks of both of us being frustrated and visiting with a lactation consultant, I mentioned that that he could not latch and Dr. Anna took her finger and adjusted the upper palate of his mouth which was not lined up evenly, and a few hours later, he latched for the very first time. In the coming months during his visits with the pediatrician, I was often told that my baby needed physical therapy due to limitations in muscle mobility and motor skills overall. I refused to take the route of physical therapy as I felt that my needs could be addressed with Dr. Anna – she had become my go-to. Melanthios was born with torticollis which completely went away by the time he was 4 months old after being adjusted weekly. Additionally, he was having difficulty standing up or pulling himself up on furniture. When I mentioned this, Dr. Anna adjusted him slightly differently, and that evening he pulled himself up on the couch.
I continue to bring Melanthios to the office with me, to ensure his body is performing optimally as he continues to grow and become more active both physically and cognitively now that he is enrolled in school.
What do you love the most about Be Well, Dr. Anna, and the staff?
What I love the most about Dr. Anna and the staff is their extremely welcoming presence which is always accompanied with a smile when you walk in to the office. Dr. Anna is very attentive and the work she does on a daily basis is that of a healer and a helper. I love that their purpose has transformed my brain to be re-wired to the thought process of having a physical issue and my first thought being that I should go see Dr. Anna.