ATRIUM HEALTH SERVICES

At Atrium Health Services we specialize in the most consistently effective health care services that we can find. We believe many others can be helped, even lives changed, by engaging in some of these unique therapeutic offerings. To increase awareness of alternative therapeutics that are optimally effective to suffering people and open-minded practitioners, we need to record your experiences.

Thanks to Dr. Joe, I have been using the Aura Patches for several months now with great results. My sleeping has been difficult for years since my bad car accident. GOOD NEWS - with the special patches on the mattress and the patch on my pillow, I actually sleep for hours at a time with only a couple of nighttime bathroom breaks. I actually DREAM again because I can get into REM sleep. WOW! I love how innovative and cutting edge Atrium is. Thank you SO MUCH!

I was in a car accident about 15 years ago. We were T boned on the passenger side where I was sitting. I thought I was OK but 6 weeks later I literally went down to my knees and could not walk upright. Somehow I was put in touch with Atrium Health Services and Dr. Mary Unger-Boyd who took over my care and diagnosed that I had a spondylolithisis of the 4th and 5th lumbar. I was treated for quite some time with very good results. My job puts a strain on my back, and over time the injured area progressively worsened. I had surgery in 2003 to repair stenosis of the spinal cord and laminectomy. That gave some relief. I was not living in Missouri at the time of the surgery and was not receiving the SOT care that I did when I lived here (which works extremely well for me). I returned to Missouri a year ago and had been in pain 24/7 for the past two to three years.

I returned to Atrium. An MRI showed the third lumbar to be out of alignment. I met Dr. Stéphane Provencher who took on my care and started working with me with not only SOT but also with supplements and eventually going to the neurosurgeon with me so that we were all on the same page as to my care before and after surgery. I have come through a very successful surgery and recovery thanks to the care I received at Atrium before, at the hospital, at home and now. I am not in pain and have resumed my life. My quality of life is wonderful now. I continue to get m y "tune ups" several times a month. I am a firm believer in SOT. I thank everyone at Atrium Health Services for seeing me through a very tough time. I have recommended a number of people to Atrium and will continue to do so as I feel I am a walking testimonial of what good chiropractic services and SOT can do for you!!

I have acute intermittent porphyria and Fibromyalgia. Like anyone who has struggled with an obscure, debilitating illness year after year, I was grateful when I found doctors who could tell me why I was sick. In the end, however, a diagnosis is only so much without an effective treatment. Essentially, the treatments I was receiving were to prevent me from dying. And it was working. I was bedridden (due primarily to exhaustion and muscle weakness) and confined to a wheelchair (which I still fell out of sometimes because I was too weak to hold myself up), but undead. By the time a friend recommended Atrium Health Services, I had all but accepted that this undead state was the best I could hope for.

On Atrium's website, I found information about a study on fibromyalgia. Although I'd received chiropractic treatment before, I'd never heard of SOT. It sounded different enough from anything else I'd done that I thought it might be worth a try. Best case scenario, I imagined, I'd have some pain relief, a little more energy, and maybe be able to sit up longer before my muscles gave out on me. I showed the information to my primary physician who was familiar with SOT and agreed I might benefit from it.

I was accepted into the study and scheduled for an appointment with Dr. Stéphane Provencher. On the way to my appointment, I passed a highway herbicide spraying site and had a severe porphyria attack. (The symptoms of such an attack are extreme nausea, dizziness, seizure-like activity, headaches, muscle pain and weakness and mental confusion/disorientation.) In my experience, the only treatment that could stop an attack of that degree was a dextrose IV. I decided to go ahead with the appointment, intending to have an IV administered as soon as I got home.

By the time I got to Atrium, I couldn't even sit up in my wheelchair. I waited for my appointment lying on the couch in the waiting room. At the beginning of the appointment, I was unable to complete some on the preliminary tests because I couldn't stand up for more than three seconds.

When my first treatment was over, I was experiencing a significant decrease in pain, which was more than I had expected so soon. What I hadn't expected at all was that my porphyria attack stopped. I was able to sit upright in my wheelchair with no difficulty; my headache, seizures, and disorientation were gone, and my nausea had subsided enough that I was able to eat a meal. On the way home, the same site that had triggered the attack earlier now only triggered mild nausea that was easily treated with oral glucose intake. I never had an IV that day after all.

Over the next few days, I noticed an increase in energy. I could walk short distances with my walker without falling, and I could sit upright for several minutes without collapsing. By my next appointment, two days later, I was able to stand without support for the necessary thirty seconds. After my third treatment, I was still using a wheelchair for long distances but was walking unaided around the house. During the first three weeks of the study, I only fell once. Before that, I'd consider myself lucky if I only fell once in a day.

Since the end of the study, I've stayed on as a patient at Atrium. Naturally, there have been some ups and downs, but my overall condition is steadily improving. My fibomyalgia pain is practically non-existent. Porphyria attacks are milder and less frequent. I only use my walker for long distances, never around the house anymore. Many days I don't use a wheelchair at all, even for things like grocery shopping. I'm able to do little things around the house that I haven't done for years – load and unload a dishwasher, put away laundry, make simple meals. For the first time, it seems unreasonable NOT to expect my health to keep improving.

If I had read this testimonial a few months ago, I would have thought, "That's nice that it helped her, but for me it would just be one more dead end." But maybe, after giving it some thought, I'd have decided it was worth a try. I'm glad that's exactly what I did.

I have been a patient of Dr. Joseph Unger's for over 20 years now.

I have benefited from his never-ending quest for excellence in health care, particularly after my auto accident. The neurosurgeon who thought I'd be dead in 10 years because of my brain injury was WRONG. The other doctors who didn't want to deal with a chronic case were not of his caliber.