"My Life Had Become My Pain And Now I Live My Life!" Find Out How Janise Overcame Her Chronic Pain!
What issues were you dealing with and how long were you dealing with them before you found Cornerstone Health?
I’m Jenise Hurtig and I am an educator and researcher and someone, someone who’s very physically active. Um, yeah. I was dealing with chronic neck and shoulder pain for about a year or more when I came to Cornerstone Health.
A lot of people think there isn’t a solution to their pain. Did you feel this way before coming to Cornerstone Health?
No, I think the main concern, well, the issue for me was that I kept thinking I’d get a quick fix if someone could just find the right answer and I hadn’t so far so I was afraid I’d get one more quick fix that didn’t work.
How long have you been coming to Cornerstone Health and what improvements have you seen?
I’ve been coming here a while. I first started coming just for clinical treatments from Dr. Fergus about two years ago. Maybe a little more. As I started to have modest improvements based on Dr. Fergus’ diagnosis. He suggested I start participating in this foundational fitness program and I’ve been participating in that since about May, mid-May of last year, so quite a while. I come twice a week and mostly I do that and once in a while, a clinical session with Dr. Fergus or with Denny. In terms of improvements, they’ve been considerable. My pain is much diminished and less frequent but I think more importantly than that, what had happened because of my having this chronic pain and me being someone again who was always very active and had never had really any kind of pain or injuries, I think what working with Dr. Fergus, with all Cornerstone Health staff has done is to give me renewed confidence that I’m healthy, that I am physically fit, that I’m getting more physically fit even as I age and that I can do most of what I used to be able to do and can have the hopes that I can do a lot more things. I think both, so in terms of my physical well-being and a lot, my psychological well-being has been great.
Can you tell us how working with Cornerstone Health has improved your quality of life?
In terms of physical activity, an example is, I had stopped doing everything I loved to do physically like bicycling, playing tennis and running. So I’ve gotten back to running and recently here in Evanston they had a 10K called Race Against Hate and I ran in that again. Just being out and being active. I think another thing is my music playing. I’ve begun to be able to get back to playing one of the instruments I play and also, I think more generally where my quality of life has improved is that I’m not, I haven’t, I’m no longer obsessed with the pain. I mean, that’s been really big so I just live with what moderate pain I have when I do and I live my life, yeah, so my life had become my pain and now I live my life.
On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being the worst pain. How much would you say your pain has improved?
It would get to be as much as like six or a seven and now, I’d say it’s from zero to two to three, you know, most of the time. It’s much, much, much less frequent where it used to be chronic.
How is Cornerstone Health different from the other clinics you've experienced?
I haven’t been to other clinics but to other types of physical therapists, individual therapists and I would say it’s been the extent to which everyone here really listens to my individual issues and develops a treatment plan that’s really based on my individual needs and also, not just needs kinda physically but how I function, you know, so it’s a very, very much of that neuro-muscular, how do my brain and my muscles connect? And really working with me as a whole person to help me recover and improve.
What would you say to someone that's thinking about coming to Cornerstone Health for treatment?
What they’d find that there would be no reason for them to be hesitant that what they would find here would be really professional and caring, committed practitioners who would work with them to improve their, improve their wellbeing. Well I guess that’s the other piece of it too is that, I think it’s the kind of wholism that it’s both abut one’s physical pain or limitations but also the way in which I see this, everyone’s treated as a whole person with tremendous care and compassion. Those things, I think, have to go together and they do here.
