It's important to us that your First Visit is as easy as 1-2-3.
We’ve tried to make this process easy-peasy, and stress-free. That said, if anything below is unclear or gives you those anxiety tummy flutters, please feel free to reach out and we’ll help explain more!
Before your Appointment
We don’t need a lot from you, all we ask for is that you bring yourself, and if at all possible fill out our form before your appointment so we can get to the important stuff right away! After we confirm your scheduled appointment (if you haven’t scheduled yet, its easy peasy to schedule online!), we will send you an email with a link to the patient portal where you will find our intake form for your first visit. If you get confused at any point, please reach out and we can walk you through the process.
If you have any questions about how to fill out your paperwork, please don’t hesistate to reach out!
At your Appointment
We start by going through your intake form (which is why its important that we have it complete), to make sure there’s nothing we need to deal with. It’s boring, but it’s important.
I will discuss with you the reason for your visit; if you’re in pain I’ll go through a series of tests and diagnostics to determine what’s causing it, and start to formulate a plan of action to get you well as soon as possible.
Once I have a solid idea of whats going on, I’ll talk you through and once you’re comfortable perform any therapies that I determine may help. These therapies include:
- Manual Adjustment of your spine, or extremities. This is the pop or cracks you’ve heard of, but that noise is the same as when you crack your knuckles; just proof the joint is moving! Rarely does it hurt, though sometimes the muscles surrounding the adjustment point will cramp or become tender, this is the normal reaction, but I always warn my patients.
- Often I will adjust multiple sites — your lower back, your neck, and your upper back — even if you have pain in only one place. It’s all connected, and I have to adjust for the whole body, not just where you feel the pain.
- Light massage or what’s called “trigger point therapy”. This is just what it sounds like, I use my fingers to try to get your muscles to stop causing pain, and pulling on the spine.
- Graston Technique. This one is more complicated, I use implements to get deeper into the tissue. It’s basically just a kind of massage, but it can cause soreness and discoloration from increased blood flow; usually it just turns your skin red for a day or so after treatment.
- Everyones favorite: Exercises! Pretty self-explanatory, but depending on your injury or aggravation I will recommend some light exercises or stretching of the affected areas. It’s fun because you get to watch me do them to demonstrate the correct way. Good news is they’re pretty simple, bad news I’ll be asking you every appointment whether or not you’re keeping up with them.