Alive and Well: Your Survival Guide for the Health Care Apocalypse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780999656600)

At the age of 30, I was teaching Chinese history and theater, and taking classes in social work. On my way to a class, I was sitting at a stop light with my turn signal on, and a drunk driver plowed into my car at 55 miles an hour! The accident broke my neck. In the process of recovering, I got very little help from the health care industry. Their first action was to misread my x-ray and send me out of the emergency room with a soft cervical collar and a broken neck. I was in constant pain. I went back to get help but was told I just had to "live with it" and take pain pills. Fortunately, in a few years, I did get help from an acupuncturist. After three months of treatment, my constant pain was almost gone, and I was sold on acupuncture! I studied for two years in an apprenticeship with the acupuncturist who had helped me, and then was surprised to learn that although acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine had become board-certified specialties in California in 1974, the practice of acupuncture was in a legal "gray area" in Illinois. It turned out I would have to be an M.D., D.O. or chiropractor to practice acupuncture legally in Illinois in 1978. I decided to become an M.D. (Acupuncture was not officially a licensed specialty in Illinois until 20 year later, so as the years went by, and the fight to get acupuncture licensed here dragged on, I was happy that I had made that decision!) I was lucky enough to get accepted to Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine at the age of 38 and graduated in 1982. After medical school, I did a three-year residency in Family Practice, and then worked for four years in the National Health Service Corps. Then I started an integrative practice, Wellness Associates of Chicago, and I am still working in that practice. Along the way, I have served on the boards of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AAAOM) and the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. I have earned national board certification in Acupuncture from the National Commission on Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine 129, have maintained my board-eligible status in Family Practice, and have been certified as a practitioner of EFT. I live in Chicago with my husband Gene. We have five children and eight grandchildren.