My Own Story as a Skeptic Part 3

Then a light turned on. During my fourth year of residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) at UCLA, a PM&R doctor gave a lecture on Prolotherapy.

I immediately liked Andrew Kochan, M.D., because he was more down to earth than other doctors that had taught me. He was a bit radical in his approach, showing how traditional medicine failed those in pain. On this day, his lecture was about Prolotherapy, and he said it helped 80-90% of his patients.

What didn’t make sense was why none of us had heard about Prolotherapy.

I was invited to spend time in Andrew’s office watching his technique. All the while, it never occurred to me how this therapy would change my life.

Despite my aches and pains, I refused to stop playing sports. During one golf outing a misguided swing caused me enormous pain in my wrist. As I was swinging, I missed the ball and hit the ground with my club at about 100 miles per hour. My right wrist was forcefully hyper-extended causing me excruciating pain.

The lingering pain was so intense I could barely write. Treatment did not help and the pain would not go away. I had to give up all sports except running. Needless to say, I was miserable.

Dr. Kochan invited me to a medical convention for the American Association of Orthopedic Medicine. During a workshop on Prolotherapy I happened to complain to one of the lecturers that my wrist was probably worse than the one he was describing. He quickly told me that he could fix my wrist with Prolotherapy.

When he explained to me that he would inject my wrist with dextrose and lidocaine, and that this would heal my injury. I had to hide my skepticism.

“Inject me with sugar water? He had to be kidding!”

After about 24 hours, my wrist felt about 50 percent better. How could this happen after months of pain with no improvement? I then went on to inject the wrist myself over the course of the next several weeks.

It was after that when the miraculous occurred. My wrist was almost completely healed. I could hardly believe it myself, but it was true!

I had also cured my tennis elbow and long standing shoulder pain with my own injections. On several occasions, Dr. Kochan, and Dr. Bjorn Eck, an orthopedic surgeon, have injected every vertebrae from my neck to my sacrum. I, thankfully, was back to playing hours of tennis! My sports life was regained.

After my own healing, I started to perform Prolotherapy on any of my patients I could convince to try it.

After many years and thousands of patients, we now have one of the largest Prolotherapy clinics in the world.