I had been in practice for about ninety days when I heard over the airplane intercom, “Is there a doctor on the plane? Flight 14793 is experiencing a medical emergency. If there is a physician on the plane we need you to identify yourself immediately.”
I sat there in my seat thinking, Wow, I sure hope there is a doctor on this plane.
After a few minutes they made the next announcement. “We’re having a medical emergency and we’re urgently requesting any physician or nurse on the plane to identify themselves.” They started going down the totem pole.
I knew that if they were calling for a doctor on a plane, it was something serious; someone was having a seizure or a stroke, a woman was giving birth or someone was having a heart attack.
I started to think of my Chiropractic career as an intern in Chiropractic College. How could I help? I finally got the courage to push the button. The stewardess came running down, and asked me to follow her.
So I walked with her up to the front of the plane and she asked, “What kind of doctor?” (silence.) I was so embarrassed to tell her I was a chiropractor. I finally mumbled, “I’m a chiropractor” (mumbled.) She replied, and I’m not making this up, “Is that a real doctor?”
She walked me up to the very front of the plane, and there was the pilot, convulsing on the floor of the cockpit. So I sat next to the man, grabbed his head and started to palpate.
I let the co-pilot know that I was going to adjust the pilot’s neck and that he might hear a popping sound. Then I adjusted him. In ten seconds his eyes dropped back in his head and he stopped flailing all around. He came right out of his convulsion, and he looked at me and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Three weeks later I got a call from the pilot. He told me, “Dr. Singer, I want you to know they found a tumor in the top of my head. They said it was compressing all the arteries and veins in my brain; there was no oxygen. The doctors said it’s a miracle that I survived. I don’t know what you did… and I talked to all the people in the cockpit and they said you took my neck and did something you called an adjustment. Well, that adjustment saved my life, and I want to know if you can adjust me again.”
Written by Dr. David Singer, D.C.- except from Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul