Yep, time to reflect on the past year and all the things that have gone right, wrong, and in between. I will start with my year in work and follow with my year in sport and if I confuse you, as they say in la belle province, c'est la vie.
I spent the first part of the year being a stay at home dad, working a few hours a week doing physical exams for a trucking company. On top of the PE's, I had to give them pee tests as well. Yum, that was fun. I learned that truckers, as a group, are the most unhealthy people I have ever met. All of the people I examined were newly hired employee's but not all were new to trucking. I tried to give advice to all of them about smoking, walking/exercise, and eating habits, but with the short time I had with them, Im not sure how well it worked. As gas was creeping up in price, it was costing me more to go to work than I was making so after making no headway to get a gas allowance from them, I resigned.
A few months ago, I found out that I would have been layed off anyway as the company HQ in Nebraska, hired a new medical officer and he said he didnt want chiropractors doing the PE's. Old school MD, wouldnt even listen to reason and the company backed him up on it even though it cost them a ton of coin in the long run to have MD's doing the exams. Oh well, not my problem... ok, I have a problem with closed minded health care professionals of any sort but I wont get into that.
In early April, my friend Molly connected me with Lisa Hunt, the director for the Value Act Capital women's pro cycling team. I agreed to work for the team at the Tour of the Gila in Silver City, New Mexico and I was gone for 8 days. Longer than I had ever been away from the family before. Thats was a great experience for me and I agreed to do additional races with the VAC team later in the season. Turns out, that was the only race I could do with the team but I keep in touch for possible future work.
Not long after I got back from NM, I had an offer to work with the men's pro team, Bissell, at the Mt Hood Classic. Another great experience, but I was away for almost another whole week. I love doing the work but it doesnt pay as much as I should be making to justify being gone from home for that long. At the time, however, I wasnt working much in an office as a chiropractor so this was fun and it paid me a bit.
In mid May, an acupuncturist friend of mine asked if I wanted to work in the office he was in. They were looking to replace another chiro that wasnt fitting in very well and since Terry and I had worked together before, I came out to look at the office. After talking to the owner, I agreed to work with them. Its been a long process to get used to the way things work in that office but after 6 months, I think Im getting the hang of it. The clinic is Russian owned and staffed and we market to Russian's that get into auto accidents. Myself and Terry are the only native english speaker's in the place so that is tough at times with my lack of knowledge of the culture and language.
In the summer, I do a lot of work with the Oregon Youth Soccer Association and their Olympic Development Program (ODP). I provide medical support for the ODP tryouts throughout the year as well as a couple of tourney's, one is during Memorial Day weekend in May. This coming January, when its cold and wet here, I get to travel to Phoenix for a regional ODP tourney. It will be a very long weekend but should be a nice break from the dreary weather here in Oregon.
My friend Jonathan and I have done medical for the Premier 50, a soccer camp for the top 50 high school girls in the country, for the past 2 years. This year, due to some politics that I didnt understand, they cancelled it and put a 7 on 7 touch football tourney in its place. This was a good experience for football as we had a few more injuries than I normally get at the Premier 50 camp.
I was asked to work at the Cascade Cycling Classic in Central Oregon for the UCI Pro Continental team, BMC, but as I had been gone for so many days already this year, I had to turn them down. This is the first year since 1998 that I have not worked at the event for one team or another.
The annual family trip to Mexico was pushed back from the normal winter travel time to June, after the kids were out of school. Stacey's brother Andy was deployed to Iraq with his Air Force Reserve Unit and since he was gone until April, we postponed the trip to June. That sounded redundant but you get the point. Andy is a Major (then Captain) and an engineer with the 557th Red Horse Squadron and they basically build stuff (sorry, dont really know what they built). Anyway, thankfully, Andy returned home safe and sound with all the ammo that he was issued with when he left.... The trip was great, a welcome rest that came immediately after I did World's. I was still training for Ironman Canada so I was trying to swim and run when I could but having never run in extreme humidity (extreme for me, 80%), it was very difficult. Swimming, my strong suit, consisted of maybe 3 short swims but more on that later.
For the past 8 seasons, I have been the team chiropractor for the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League. This season, the team was up for sale, and in late October, they were sold to a Calgary businessman. The new owner cleaned house, fired the head coach, one of his assistants, the head trainer (he had been there 32 years), and some of the front office staff. He hired all new staff, all with NHL experience. The new trainer had worked with the NY Islanders and the Olympic team in Bejiing this summer. I went to meet him and left him a resume. Not to 'apply' for a job, but more to let him know what I was all about. He said he would call me later that week. He never did. I tried to get him on the phone but had no luck so at the next home game, I showed up, like always, and was prepared to do what I always did on game day. I wanted to find the trainer first but by the time I finally found him, all the guys that wanted to be adjusted, had to get dressed for warm up. He didnt recognize me from our first meeting (first bad sign) then he says "I dont need you to come to games anymore".... Um, ok, what DO you want? Im not sure he says, I will be doing most things in house and referring out. Okay, so, um, Im still confused. Anyway, long story short, after reviewing my resume with me (obviously he didnt read it before) he said he would come to see my office later in the week and then blew me off to talk to someone else that had interrupted me. Again, he said he again that he would call me and visit my office later that week. Its been 5 weeks and I still havent heard from him. i have given in to the fact that I wont be working with the club anymore but who knows. I havent contacted him either but if players are in need of an adjustment, I would think I might have received a call.
My impression of him is the same that I have of a lot of ATC's (not all) and PT's that work with elite and professional teams; they feel like I am somehow going to step on their toes (usually because of a bad experience with a chiro) and they put their ego in the way of the health of the athletes they are paid to protect. As a side note, I saw a chiro that I had worked with before, a real prince, coming into the arena one for a game and given that he went to Bejiing as one of the Team USA chiro's, Im sure he knows the new trainer, and it could be the players are now going to see him. I havent found that out for sure but it seems to fit since said chiro always told me he doesnt like hockey and yet, he was at a game, hmmmmm.
Anyway, you know, all in all, I had a good year with work. Better than last year in general I would say. Im looking forward to 2009. As I said, the work year starts with a trip to Phoenix where there is a very good chance that I will be seeing the sun.
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