Ignorance is Bliss

My Mom passed away in May of 1991. She was only 59 years old. I will turn 54 this summer. Your brain starts to think, what about me? Thank you Lord for keeping me in the dark as to the day or hour. My Dad turns 80 this fall. Whew! What a blessing! Having the opportunity to still have him around to ask questions, get support and enjoy memories is wonderful. I don't have that chance with my Mom but lessons from her still come back on occasion. One of the statements she made to one time was, "ignorance is bliss". I don't remember the context it was in or if it was directed at me or someone else. It probably took me several years of my own maturity to grasp what that statement really means. The formal definition of ignorance is a lack of knowledge, learning or information. Not that I should have to give the definition of IS but because of our 42nd President asking the question about its definition I will give it. Actually "is" has a complicated definition, but for our purpose here it means to identify or amplify the "subject". In this case the subject is ignorance. Bliss means supreme happiness, joy or contentment. In other words a lack of knowledge of a particular subject gives you happiness or joy because you have no worries or care of the subject. The subject has no effect in your life so you show no concern for it either way. More importantly you do not have enough knowledge to discuss the subject with any degree of certainty with anyone else. I have a couple of friends that if you here them discussing a subject you can rest assured they know the subject very well or they would not be talking about it at all. This brings me to my point. I have patients that tell me something a well meaning friend or relative has shared with them about my patient's health. I can tell by the info that it is normally some watered down version of something that has been told to them concerning their own health. Sadly there may be different circumstances and conditions going on that don't match up with my patient's condition. Worse is when a well educated physician tells a patient something that I know is totally incorrect concerning this patients particular spinal condition. I surely won't claim that I know everything. There are some things, though, that because of 30 years of experience I feel pretty confident that what I am telling the patient or how I am treating the patient is correct. I believe the information I'm giving my patients is for their best benefit. Another point I'd like to make about ignorance is why we do 2 Health Care Classes a week to educate our patients to the true benefits and knowledge of what chiropractic is. When I graduated in 1980 there were approximately 60,000 chiropractors in our country and 10-12% of the population used our care. Here we are 30 years later and there are 59,000 chiropractors and only 15% of our population are using our care. One of the major issues falls on us. WE have to educate our patients. They are getting educated either way from someone that is ignorant to true chiropractic or getting bogus information from television. I get very frustrated at TV shows that purposefully degrade our profession for no other reason but to perpetuate their ignorance to what we do and to the benefits we offer to our patients health and well being. These people live feeling no malice because of their ignorance. Politely or not, I have made the statement on many occasions "I can help ignorance with education but I can't help stupidity"(someone who has no desire to learn or have the correct information). I'll let you choose which of these is TV or even you.

As always, all I ask is a chance.