Not much going on since the weekend…except for a 3 hour CEU conference I attended last night which highlighted cervical and lumbar traction uses and techniques. (warning to those of you who don’t care about cervical or lumbar traction…this may not be the post for you.)
The conference began at 5:15 in Odessa, FL which is about 45 minutes from the clinic I work at, and I left about 4:45…so I drove quickly. I showed up about 5 minutes late, but that’s ok…because the most important part of being late is that I got my pick of the entire buffet of food that was left over from the “pre-conference” meal. Lucky for them I was starving…there was a TON of food left! They had pizza, fried chicken fingers, hamburgers, brownies (and some weird wraps and fresh vegetables…needless to say…those stayed on the buffet line). Not only did I get to eat to my heart’s content, I also got to miss about 15 minutes of the conference while I ate in the other room (and then had seconds).
Finally I made it out to the conference. As I walked in, the speaker was discussing the benefits of putting the patient in a neutral position and that a minimum of 25 lbs should be used while performing cervical traction…this apparently didn’t sit with one of the techs there. He began to yell about how in 7 years of performing cervical traction, he had never I REPEAT NEVER! seen a patient go from 0-25#’s of traction at one shot. The tech found this deplorable and many of the therapists began to argue with the speaker. They began to prod the speaker and asked him about C5-C6 instability, and they asked him whether or not he would do the same procedure with someone who had those issues…to which he said yes…to which they responded with more yelling. It was great to be on the sideline for all of this. It sort of became this back and forth fodder for well-read professionals. They were yelling, but they were yelling the names of authors and titles of research that backed up their various points…I found the whole thing to be hysterical.
Once the cervical traction issues were settled…or left unsettled…the speaker moved on to tell everyone that lumbar traction should always be performed in prone…(insert similar story to what I wrote above). It was mid-way through this tiff that I decided to go back for 3rds and 4ths on the buffet line…I had already sided with the speaker and didn’t care to hear a bunch of people who were stuck-in-their-ways hash it out…I was hungry.
To be fair to the speaker, he had 10-12 studies to back up every point he made and stayed remarkably calm considering the firing range he walked on to. In fact, one person in-particular (who looked strikingly similar to Dan Aykroyd during the early 1980’s) really had it out for the speaker. Everytime there was anything he could do to nitpick or start debate…he did. His favorite two lead-in’s were:
Dan Aykroyd Look-a-Like…or DALaL (with a smarmy look on his face): “Ummmm…so what does your evidence say about (insert claim here)”
and…
DADLaL (with the same unintelligible, obnoxiously brazen facial expression): “Sooooo…(pausing to allow everyone to realize how important he is) IIIIII have been practicing under (insert allegedly well known physician here) and hiiiiszzz approach is compllleeeeeT…ly differenT.
Based on my flattering description of him, you can tell I was pretty impressed. And as I stated earlier, the speaker did a great job of neutralizing most of the nay-sayers while subtly crushing their arguments. The conference ended with me eating a couple more slices of pizza and volunteering myself for the lumbar traction tutorial…all in all, not a bad time!
See you all back here Thursday for SCT V
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