It is a day that stands out in infamy for me. The year was 1994. It is a day that changed my life in any number of ways.

The day in question was day one of a four day course in the McKenzie Method. Yes, I will be the first to admit that it sounds a little corny, all this life-changing stuff. But in hindsight, it really isn’t that far from the truth.

On that particular day, I faced a challenge that all clinicians will face. I sat in a room full of my peers while an instructor, through no fault of his own, stood in front of a classroom and challenged every belief I had about my clinical practice patterns and the beliefs I was maintaining about the whole lot.

At the end of the day, it came down to a simple choice.

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My story is probably pretty similar to many others. On September 11, 2001, I awoke to a beautiful, sunny day in Austin, Texas.  I had my breakfast and my coffee, just like I would typically do any other day. I drove to the office, just like I had many times before. I listened to the radio on the drive in to the office.

It was just another typical day, right? As we all know, this day would be far from typical. Each passing moment seemed to present a new horror, beamed directly into our homes and our consciousness by the power of digital media.

On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, I awoke to the same sunshine, the same coffee, the same drive to work – but a world that had been forever changed. All those typical things weren’t so typical anymore. It was, as Don Henley once noted, “the end of the innocence”.

Looking back from a perspective 10 years removed, we will never take the pain away from 9/11/01. But we must also remember 9/12/01 and hold our heads high. It was the dawn after the dark. After the shock and anguish of the day before, it was the day that we got up off the mat, the day we were strongly reminded of the values that are at the core of this great country. It was a day that we pulled together – one nation, indivisible. 

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It is estimated that there are now 40 million (or more, depending on the study) runners in the United States. There are almost 11 million of those runners that are running twice per week or more. In the context of health benefit, the rising numbers are good.

There is a sad reality attached to these numbers as well. The research would indicate that at least 60% of all runners will be injured in any given year, and that 70% of injuries are recurrent. For those who like to do math, that amounts to 24 million injured runners, of which 16.8 million runners will have recurrent problems.

When you start doing the math on running injuries, some frightening economic numbers rise to the surface.

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There is a lot of debate these days on illegal immigration. I think it is fair to say that it is a divisive topic at the very least.

I find this a very intriguing topic because I myself am a legal immigrant to this country. I went through all of the standard procedures to be able to reside and work in this country legally and have the privilege to pay taxes just like all the rest of you hard-working citizens.

But then I found out that there are over 13 million illegal aliens and U.S.-born children in the United States, even though there are laws prohibiting it. There are laws prohibiting an employer from hiring an illegal immigrant. Do we need more hard-core immigration laws like they have instituted in Arizona, laws which some believe border (no pun intended) on racial profiling? Do we need to just build a big wall around the country? Or are all the solutions we need already in place?

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