july 22nd of last year i was hiking down a pretty steep hill in a national forest on the coast in
oregon and i was wearing flip-flops and i tripped and almost went face-first over a cliff and so
what i did is i slid my foot to catch myself my left foot to catch myself while the gravity and
the angle of the hill was so steep that when my flip-flop got stuck on a rock my foot went
under this way and my leg went this way and so immediately i thought oh my gosh i dislocated my
ankle and i took my foot and my leg and i pushed it together and i laid on my back and i had my
daughter grab a hold of my ankle and i moved out on all different positions to reset the ankle
and again i thought i had dislocated it and i had her run down to the car to go grab shoes which i
had some stretchy socks in there and i bound my ankle and my my foot together and my leg and then
we walked a quarter mile out and then i drove 11 miles back to camp and she broke down and and she
ended up calling my husband and and he was like well are you going to go to the emergency room and
i thought no i just dislocated it i can take care of this at home well my sister the next day
she decides she told me that i should go to the emergency room and have an x-ray done just to make
sure that i didn't do anything more serious so when i went they immediately wanted to schedule me
for an orthopedic surgery and they said there's no way that you're going to be able to
heal this on your own it's a spiral fracture of the fibula and a double fracture on the on the
interior meleus so fracture here and a fracture here and a spy will fracture up the fibula i
looked at the at the doctor and i said i'm not gonna have surgery um i know that i can
heal this on my own and the look on there on his face was in shock like are you sure no you need
surgery on this nobody heals this i said i'm sure and he said okay well i'm going to need
to have you sign a waiver to walk out of here so that if something happens we don't get sued
so then i got a hold of my osteopath and i told him what happened and he told me that i needed
to go and have surgery and that i should cancel my appointment with him because i've been seeing him
for bodywork for six years i have a rod in my back and he treats me for that he keeps me mobile
and i said no i'm going to come see you i'm not going to cancel my appointment and i'm not having
surgery and this went on three times and so i ended up walking in with my crutches or crutching
in and i laid down and he did some work on my ankle and he convinced me to go see an orthopedic
surgeon and the only reason why i was going was i wanted a walking boot to help stabilize the ankle
so i go to the orthopedic surgeon and he showed me the x-rays and i actually had
done a pretty good job setting all of the bones in my foot myself and he told me that
if i didn't have surgery that i would never walk again right and if i did walk i would probably be
on a cane and i would be in a lot of pain and i said no i'm not gonna have surgery and and then i
proceeded to ask him if he wanted to check out my ankle and he was so dramatic in his response that
he said if you unwrap your ankle your foot's gonna fall off your leg no keep it wrapped up
like yours your break is that severe and i started giggling because i had been unwrapping
my leg for a week and dunking it in ice baths and massaging the leg to help get blood to it so that
i could heal it and get the swelling down um so i went home with a walking boot
after a little bit of a fight to get that from him and um i proceeded to do dr joe's work and uh in
in conjunction with other modalities like cryotherapy i would
take my whole leg and foot and dip it in a ice bath four times a day for 15 minutes
then once i did that i would take rip rick simpson oil butter and rub it all over my leg and ankle
and then gua shot it and then i would take a yoga strap and then i would harness it underneath
the joints between the toes and the foot and pulled down on my foot so that i could get all
of the achilles and tendons stretched out and i did this for weeks and i don't take pain meds so
i was just really high the whole time that's my that's my pain medicine and that's how i
essentially healed my ankle along with doing heart brain coherence and then doing blessing
of the energy center so once i did that work laying in bed fully relaxed and open to the field
i would take my energy to my foot and ankle and from there this is where it's profound
because i've never experienced this in my own body my foot in my leg would start contorting
in all of these different directions and it was not me i was not moving my foot and ankle
it was my nervous system moving the muscles and tendons to create some sort of
harmony in the foot so that things could align and i could feel things moving and when it got done
it felt better like there was a release of energy and this went on for weeks and weeks and weeks
and then pretty soon i realized that i could go in with my own brain and i could manipulate what the
nervous system was doing so then the places that hurt really bad i would go in and stretch those
areas out and manipulate and create space so that i could put the metatarsals back in place in my
foot because those bones were displaced too so i popped all those back into place and by six weeks
i was walking it was wrapped but it was i was walking and by with a cane and by 12 weeks i was
off the cane and i was walking on a wrapped foot and by 16 weeks i was in a shoe and i was hiking
and when i saw my awesome my orthopedic my osteopath he when i walked in at six weeks
with a cane he said the first thing he said to me was i don't really think you're human humans don't
do this and then when i saw him at the eight week eight week mark and i'm walking better he said um
this is some sort of miracle like i've never seen this in the 35 years i've been practicing
medicine and then at the 16 mark when i was hiking and i was out on trails again it was the the best
compliment that i could have ever gotten and that was he said i've never seen anything like
what you've done and for the first time in my 35 years i questioned orthopedic modalities and
i just looked at him and i said i take that as a compliment and with a serious doctor face he said
you should and i've told nurses i've told physical therapists what i've done i worked
with a physical therapist for ultrasound on the leg and everybody that i've talked to
they said that this is simply a miracle and i tell them about dr joe's work and how i
went in with his work creating heart brain coherence and working with the energy centers
to create space for it to heal and my own nervous system knew what to do once i created that space
every single day in bed it would correct itself and that's how i started walking again and at my
10 month anniversary i did the whole six mile hike on that same trail that i blew my ankle out on