I had a patient come in, and the first thing they say out of their mouth is, “Doc, what did I do?”

When I hear that, it’s always interesting because I know it’s going to be one of two things.

We’re probably not talking about a major injury and by that I mean, a very obvious thing to were like they were fine, they fell downstairs, and then their back started hurting, or the neck started hurting. That’s pretty obvious.

What we’re talking about is we’re either talking about repetitive stress or something that’s happened slowly over time, or we’re talking about a biomechanical issue.

I’m always thinking those two things when I hear someone say that, “Doc, what did I do?” What we have to do then is to break it down and go back in history and figure out exactly what are you doing?

What do you do for work? Tell me about your life. Tell me about other symptoms. How long has this been going on?

We’re usually able to really kind of trace these breadcrumbs out and figure out where this all started from because when we figure out where it all started from, then we can make a plan as to where to move forward in the future.

One thing I will tell you is that things never stay the same. They either get better or they get worse, but they’re not going to be the same as they were two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago.

We have to see this progression because this tells me not only were the biggest issue was initially, but where the biggest issue is now, how we can put all this together and what we can do to make sure that everything heals the right way.

Anytime I hear, “Doc, what did I do,” I know that it’s going to be something that we’re going to have to get some history on and really kind of build up this plan to figure out where it was now, where it was then, where it is now and what we need to do to get the results that we want.