Ilene Spector, DO - Helping My Health from the Head, Neck, to my Feet!

I have transferred this from a Blog to be here so that people who are looking related to fibromyalgia are more likely to see it as I think it is an important piece....  Mardy

It's been such a wonderful pleasure in the last year to see Lumigrate making a difference in the lives of people with chronic illness, which is typically chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.  The 'Grate Group', as one of them named the group that was regularly convening on our facebook page, has had many of it's members making considerable improvements in their health because in part, the information and support they received from me and Lumigrate.  One of those, and I think it was the one who named it the Grate Group actually, reported that she's gone several days without a headache, and that might be a result of her latching onto the concept of the home page 'You' model and being more empowered as a partner with the physician or physicians on 'her team', and making changes.  One of the things I've been meaning to write about at an appropriate time is a very special provider who I met at the Integrative Medicine Center in November when I attended a seminar one evening. 

Her name is Ilene Spector, and she is a "DO", or doctor of osteopathy.  Ilene lives and sees patients in Crested Butte, which is a ski town that was a mining town in the 'gold mine' years of the 'Wild West' here, and is south and east of here over a couple of pretty challenging passes to drive with the deer and winter weather.  I had her over for breakfast to show her what Lumigrate 'is' and talk about what she was hoping to accomplish in Grand Junction and hope to provide some solutions to her 'barriers' for enough space, referrals, and her 'insurance dilemma' (she walks the walk -- we had oatmeal with flax seeds and nuts with non dairy milk and chai tea).

Ilene is one of a growing number of health care providers who are choosing to be very discerning with what insurances they accept.  Gone are the days that you can presume that medical providers all are set up to 'take' insurance.  I've been a provider -- there was a whopping overhead and long delay in reimbursement -- sometimes almost a year -- and it cut so deeply into my revenues as an occupational therapist that the trend didn't look good for the future after you also pay your assistant, supplies, space rental, insurances, etc.  So when you walk out of a medical office and see what the charge was, don't assume that is what the provider is going to receive.  I chose to develop Lumigrate, in order to bring quality health care to people at a price they can afford and which will allow me to have the kind of life I quit an extremely good job and went back to years of education (which led to my chronic illness problems, I believe -- fumes from human cadavers, brutally difficult coursework one semester in the old style of 'break the ones that can't work as hard as the medical industry requires when you're working'.   

While I am benefitting from the treatments she is doing on me -- finding many things on the left side of my body that were 'glitchy' (my word) and freeing them up with her gentle technique and fascinating percussive device held against my right hip while her left hand moves to different areas of the body for correcting whatever she is so attuned to feeling, I am sorry that the medical business is causing medical providers to have to work so hard, drive distances, and be leading such different lives than they perhaps thought they were going to have in the past when they went the directions they did with their education.  In Dr. Spector's case, she was a homeopath before she returned to osteopathy school.  Her brochure highlights:

• osteopathic manual medicine offers an answer to many problems that have not resolved with conventional medical, surgical or other therapeutic treatments. 
• osteopathic treatment is gentle and non-traumatic and addresses the body as an individualized whole.
• appropriate for newborns on up
• helpful for a wide variety of medical complaints as well as various pain syndromes and recovery from injuries and traumas
• treatment facilitates changes in how the body functions and restores health
• osteopathy in the cranial field is a specialty of Dr. Spector's.  For more information, visit www.cranialacademy.org (this is the website for the organization she is on the board of, and I believe she was president of in the past, if my memory serves correctly). 

I found it interesting that after a very standard intake form, which for me takes about 3x as long to fill out as I think it should due to the complexity of my medical history since having fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue for 15 and 20 years, respectively, after a prolonged 'leading up to' of intermittent symptoms in my late teens and twenties, including a drastic change immediately after an immunization which was the biggest class action lawsuit prior to the tobacco industry, she interviewed me very closely about injuries.  She seemed interested even in the overall benign injuries such as skiing and Rollerblading falls, as well as the bigger ones, such as being dropped as an infant.  But I forgot about getting involved in the doorway of a car a few years ago when it lurched forward when the driver got distracted and didn't have the car in park.  She found all these 'things' with the left side of my body and told me that and later that week I realized the "error of my ways/memory" and called her to tell her what I'd forgotten to include on my history.  

A week or two later my elderly father saw me on Christmas, and I'd just seen him for a couple of days at Thanksgiving, and he mentioned later to my brother in law that seeing me mentally tracking more like I used to was the best part of Christmas.   He did not know that I'd had a session with Dr. Spector!  Interesting!!?

So, Ilene, while I trust you are starting to prepare for another trek to 'the big city of Grand Junction' and gathering all the 'stuff' you haul with you (patient education and the nice quiet little device that does tapping at the left hip for some of the session), I want to thank you for what you are doing for me and I look forward to seeing how 'far my brain will go' on healing. 

I appreciate having another wonderful provider and 'medical genre' such as cranial osteopathy represented at Lumigrate.com and look forward to developing something in the Forum area that includes you.  I hope to have more information here in the future to continue persuading people to pursue these types of providers.  I know that two people in the US have told me they switched to DOs after following the above link to the website YOU helped create for The Cranial Academy).

Anyone wishing to make an appointment with Dr. Spector or ask questions, someone takes her appointments at 970/261-0602 and for questions for Ilene, Dr. Spector's office/fax # is 970/349-2095. 

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PS -- As of 3/10/2010 I've now had four sessions with Dr. Spector and each one impresses upon me how much there is to her seemingly subtle treatment.  I'm always very tired the next day, much like after a flareup subsides, and this last treatment of 2 days ago resulted in a pain in the sacral area for a few moments when I got into bed like any other night, and I realized that for a few minutes she had focused on that area in the treatment 12 hours earlier.  When these things occur out of the blue, as you might related, you kinda know you're not having a 'placebo effect' and I just very much appreciate her skillful input and look forward to where the treatments lead.  I find myself continuing to feel like the 'old me', moreso in personality lately.  And maybe with writing and I think earlier in the day or when I've had good rest I am seeing it with my speaking ability.  It's like the cylanders are firing again .... I used to be a V8 I think and I'm maybe feeling like a V6 that was only hitting on 4 for years. 

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PS - as of 5/5/2010 ... I had a fifth session last month and I was having a recurrence of a problem with my neck, which has DJD and many cervical disks out of whack which I've opted to go the route of the most noninvasive as possible.  Some won't manipulate my neck (and some will) after looking at the MRI but she was comfortable doing so and I can see why -- she is ever so skilled and gifted at the when and how much and what to do to get the body/mind/spirit in a good place for easy manipulation in my opinion.  I think it's really REALLY interesting that a DO got to visit #5 before doing a manipulation of the structures such as the bones, really attesting to how her technique is so focused on the cells and soft tissues. 

I find it more fascinating and intriguing every time I go!  

She's seeing how many people are unable to receive her services who have insurance but not the $ to pay privately at this time as in the past (the economy) and she is considering doing the long process of getting approved by some of the most used insurances.  I remember how time extensive that was when I became the OTR in the PCP Building five years ago and hope it's easier for her now.  So silly.... different packages of many many pages for each different company rather than ONE that they all utilize and go from there.  The system stinks but it is the system and we have to operate with it as best we can. 

I suggest that if YOU want to go to a provider who is not listed by your insurance that you always notify your insurance of your request and why, particularly if you think it will save them $ and increase your health in the long run.  AND then let the person who determines your insurance benefits if you have them through work or etc know as well .... Every year they make a decision about what plan(s) to offer and they can't know you have BETTER IDEAS about your health and it's care if YOU don't speak up!  Remember, YOU are the key in your health care and we ALL have to work really really hard from now until things get turned around, which is going to be YEARS and decades most likely, to make things 'good'.  We're in it together!  Grab an oar!