Chiropractor Gerald Hendrickson D.C.

The answer reaches back long before I ever wore a white coat, adjusted a patient, or stepped onto the campus of Palmer College of Chiropractic. In truth, my story began decades before I was born. It began with my grandfather.

As a little boy in the early 1960s, I loved sitting beside my grandfather and listening to his stories. Some were funny. Some were about farming, his hobbies, or woodworking. Others were about our family. But there was one story that captured my imagination and attention every time he told it. It was the story of the day he nearly died.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, my grandfather developed what everyone believed was acute appendicitis. He lived in a small rural community where medical care was limited, and the nearest major hospital was hours away by train.

The local physician made a house call. Those were different times.

After examining him, the doctor quietly delivered devastating news. My grandfather was far too sick to survive the trip to Chicago for surgery. There was nothing more medicine could do.

Then the doctor paused, “There is one more thing we could try”.

He explained that the local chiropractor had been helping people with conditions like this and offered to bring him to the house. My grandfather had no choice but to agree, as a last-ditch effort. He didn’t want to die. When the chiropractor arrived, Grandpa was curled in the fetal position, unable to straighten himself because of the pain. After a brief examination, the chiropractor asked my grandmother to “fetch the chamber pail”.

Moments later, he delivered a spinal adjustment.

Almost immediately, my grandfather became violently ill and vomited into the pail. The chiropractor wasn’t alarmed. He simply smiled and said, “Tomorrow you’ll feel much better”.

He was right

The next morning my grandfather got out of bed, went back to work, and resumed his life.

As a child, I didn’t know what to make of the story. It sounded almost unbelievable. I tucked it away in the back of my mind as one of my grandpa’s favorite stories.

Years later, something happened that made me think about it in an entirely different way.

My grandfather underwent abdominal surgery for an unrelated condition. When the operation was over, the surgeon came out wearing a puzzled expression.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” he said, “this man’s appendix has completely atrophied. It looks as though it should have ruptured decades ago”.

I immediately thought of Grandpa’s story. That’s the first time I realized there might be far more to chiropractic than I ever could have imagined.

---

Then life handed my family another remarkable chapter.

It was 1943. My father was twenty-three years old, serving in the Army during World War II. While driving back to his military base, he fell asleep behind the wheel.

The accident changed everything.

Army physicians examined him and concluded that he would never walk again. He was medically discharged as a permanently disabled veteran, a rare occurrence in the middle of a world war.

When the train carrying him home finally arrived, my grandfather was waiting.

He lifted his injured son from the train, settled him into the family car, folded the wheelchair into the back, and drove away.

But he didn’t drive home.

Instead, he drove to the office of the very same chiropractor who had helped him years before.

My father began treatment.

At first the changes were almost imperceptible.

A little sensation.

A little strength.

Then more.

Week after week, hope slowly replaced despair.

Six months later, someone snapped a photograph that still means the world to me.

In it, my father stands shirtless beneath a summer sky, muscles strong and defined, swinging a pickaxe as he helped dig the basement for my grandparents’ new home.

The wheelchair was gone.

The paralysis was gone.

The predictions that he would never walk again had become nothing more than a distant memory.

He lived the rest of his life as a healthy, active man.

---

Years passed.

Eventually I found myself enrolled at Palmer College of Chiropractic.

I believed in chiropractic because of my family’s experiences, but I had no idea how desperately I would soon need it myself.

My wife and I were eager to begin our family.

Instead, we experienced heartbreak.

One miscarriage became another.

And another.

Each loss was more painful than the last.

We searched high and low for answers.

Specialists.

Experts.

Every test imaginable.

The answer was always the same. “Some people simply cannot have children.”

One Physician even told us, “Perhaps it’s God’s will that you not have children.”

Those words were devastating.

But I could not forget my family’s history.

I asked my wife to see a chiropractor.

During her examination, the chiropractor identified a dysfunction affecting her lower back and believed it could be interfering with the normal function of the nerves serving her reproductive system.

She began receiving regular chiropractic care.

Gradually, her chronic low back pain disappeared.

Her painful menstrual cycles became normal.

Then something happened that changed our lives forever.

She became pregnant.

This time she carried the pregnancy to term.

Then she did it again.

Today we are blessed with two healthy sons.

Every time I look at them, I cannot help but think about the journey that brought them into this world.

---

People still ask me why I became a chiropractor.

The truth is, I don’t feel as though I chose chiropractic.

In many ways, chiropractic chose me.

It shaped my family history before I ever entered the picture.

It gave my grandfather another chance at life.

It helped restore my father after a devastating wartime injury.

It gave my wife and me the opportunity to become parents after we had nearly abandoned hope.

Because of those experiences, I have spent my professional life trying to give others the same gift that was given to my family, the opportunity to heal, to recover, and to live life more fully.

Over the years, I have been privileged to care for thousands of patients. Every adjustment reminds me of the stories that brought me here. Every patient carries a story of their own. Every life has the potential to change.

When I stop and think about it, I realize how profoundly chiropractic has shaped my own life.

Without it, I may never have been born.

Without it, I would have never been a chiropractor.

Without it, I would never have experienced the joy of raising two sons, or the privilege of serving generations of patients in my community.

Looking back over the years, I don’t simply see a career.

I see a legacy.

A legacy that began with one family, one chiropractor, one act of hope – and one that I have been honored to carry forward every day of my professional life.