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Healing Hands of Chiropractic Help Joplin FamiliesJanette Lonsdale • Tue, Jul 12, 2011

It is one thing to give a chiropracticadjustment to a person in a doctor’soffice, but to pack a portable tableand take your caring to the tornadosmashed streets of Joplin just sixdays after the storm issomething else. That is exactly howDoctor Crystal Peairs and the staffat Lafayette Square ChiropracticCenter spent one weekend.

“Being a chiropractor, I knew that a lot of people would be lifting and moving andthe odds were they were going to be sore,” said Dr. Peairs. “Whether you are arelief worker, or if it was your home that was destroyed, there isn’t the timeto seek out a chiropractor.”

For the team of 11 people who gave-up their time to bring a healing touch to thepeople of Joplin, the desire to help was a deeply human reaction to the need theysaw so close to home.

“I feel compelled any time there is a tragedy to go and help myself,” said thepractices Licensed Clinical Social Worker April Breeden. “To have that level ofdevastation only a few hours away… it is important to try and go and help in anyway that you can. I wish I could do more.”

On streets, where rubble was all that was left of the homes that had lined thestreet only seven days earlier, the team set up their mobile treatment space.

“May I have the honor of adjusting your baby?” Peairs asked the mother of acrying infant.

The woman said that the child had not slept since the tornado. Babies feel thetrauma around them but they have no way to release their stress explainedPeairs as she went to work on the infant. Within minutes the baby was sleepingsoundly.

Near by they met a man who woke after the tornado, several streets from hishome with his head in a laundry basket. He described clawing his way out of therubble. He told Peairs that the tornado hit his home before the sirens soundedand he had no time to get to the basement. He felt sure he was going to join hisdead wife.

Everywhere people were searching the rubble hoping to salvage personal itemssuch as photos.

“One woman was jumping up and down for joy because she found her hairbrush,” said Breeden.

For some people their rubble-digging focus was so intense that they had to becajoled into taking even a five-minute break for an adjustment. For others,overcome with emotions, there was time to listen and talk about their experience.

A man told the team how he tried to hold onto his dogs but they got sucked outof his arms. He was almost dizzy with excitement that two of his animals foundtheir way home shortly after the storm and the third was rescued from undersome debris.

For people, who are without a dog’s keen senses, finding home often proved alittle more difficult. The unfamiliar landscape of debris bore little resemblance tothe landmarks and streetscapes that people knew. Some people, standing outsidethe homes they had occupied for years, were quite simply lost.

Most of the people the Lafayette Square Chiropractic team met were able to say Iam fine, my family is fine, and my pets are fine. However, others presented withserious injuries.

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One couple told how they left their twin infants in the care of a friend, to drive tothe store. Their vehicle was sucked high above the high school into the eye ofthe storm. For a few extraordinary moments the car felt stationery and itsoccupants saw debris floating and twirling around them in perfect order.To prevent being sucked out of the vehicle, the man lay prostate with hishead under the dashboard and his feet on his girlfriend’s chest. She lay pinnedto the back seat of the car. They landed 10 to 12 blocks from where they hadbeen picked-up.

“The vehicle, is a huge honking four-door thing and I was just baffled,” saidPeairs. “It was just beat up and destroyed and you cannot believe that someonecould get out.” The female passenger sustained minor injuries but according to Peairs, the manhas several severe spinal injuries, “he was barely walking.” The people the team met were experiencing varying stages of grief. For some,just happy to be alive, this manifested as good humor and jokes. Spray-paintedon a still-standing wall, “open floor plan, natural light” playfully describedthe situation.

On another street, a family focused on cleaning-up a front yard and sorting thedebris.

“They had moved everything,” said Peairs “They had metals here and over herethey had debris of branches, and over there was dry wall, the yard was cleanedup and raked and then you look up at the house and there is only onewall standing. They needed something to do and when you have nothing, whatelse can you do?”

On the Sunday, Pearis and Breeden noticed a crowd of 30 to 50 volunteers nottoo far from where the Lafayette Chiropractic team was set up. After an initialexcitement that someone or something had been found in the debris, theteam realized it was instead a group of volunteers brought together for thebenefit of President Obama.

“I think it was very important that he visited the area and I do think ithelped," said Breeden. "But it gave the impression that there was enough help.”

In all, the team believes they adjusted about 250 people in a day and a half. Theyworked an area that was about three blocks square on one side of Main Street onSaturday, and on the Sunday a couple of blocks on the other side.

“When we hit the second block we saw where the high school was, everythingwas destroyed as far as the eye could see,” said Peairs.

On the drive back to St. Louis, the women sobbed for what they had seen.

For more information:

Dr. Crystal L. Peairs Lafayette Square Chiropractic Centre1013 South 18th StreetSaint Louis, Missouri 63104

Tel: (314) 762-0669

Website: http://www.lafayettesquarechiropractic.com

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