Dear Friends,

No, I’m not giving you the finger. I played D3 football for a small college in central Ohio called Denison University. Some notable people who attended DU are Jennifer Garner and Steve Carell. I love to bug my family by mentioning this every time I see them on TV. 😂

The day before our first game my freshman year, we were performing a tip drill. The coach throws a pass, I tip it, and the next defensive back catches it. A simple drill to work on reflexes. During one rep, my finger jammed while I tipped the pass. It hurt like every jammed finger I had ever experienced—and there had been many. (I was moved from wide receiver to safety because I didn’t have the best hands.) 😄

So I got back in line without looking at my finger, and my teammate Tim asked, “What did you do?” “I jammed my finger,” I replied. He said, “Let me see.” So I pulled my glove off and held out my hand—just in time to watch Tim buckle over and vomit on the football field.

When I looked down at my finger, I realized I hadn’t jammed it. It was a compound dislocation. The two furthest finger bones had torn away from the first bone, and the first bone had torn through the skin and was sticking out like the bottom of a chicken drumstick, while the rest of the finger dangled from the skin.

Interestingly, my pain immediately skyrocketed. I freaked out and started running around with a whole line of defensive backs trying to chase me down. My best friend from college, a linebacker, witnessed the mayhem and said it looked like a scene straight out of the slap-happy comedy show The Benny Hill Show.

On the ride to the hospital, our trainer Dale Evans said, “Francis, you’ll never play football again.” I thought, Dale—it’s a finger, not my leg.

I often reference this event when working with people. What was my real pain level? It felt like a very tolerable jammed finger. What was my pain level with emotion? A 15/10. But that was all in my head. My real pain was that of a jammed finger. Only when I added emotion—after truly seeing my injury—did the pain heighten.

Your ability to compartmentalize your emotions around pain can help decrease your pain. When I refer someone for surgery, I go to great lengths to talk them through how well they’re going to do and encourage them to embrace the discomfort, because it will improve every day. I do the same thing when I take on a patient.

Again, emotion with pain will heighten your discomfort. This story is a great example of how much our reactions create our reality. Dr. Johnson did a hell of a job patching me up. That finger is a bit knobby, but overall it still functions like normal. The body is quite miraculous!

So, if you’re in a ton of pain, make sure you check your emotions at the door. You may be pointing your finger at the wrong cause!

Here is our tried and true protocol for supporting bone and tissue healing after a fracture or surgery:

• Calcifood Wafers – 6 a day (building blocks for bone repair)

• Ostrophin PMG – 6 a day (creates a blueprint for your bone building cells – osteoblasts – to lay down new tissue)

• Ligaplex I – 5 a day (nutrients needed for ligament and tendon repair

• Bromelain – 3, 3x a day. (a proteolytic enzyme that helps reduce acute inflammation and “eats up” misaligned scar tissue so your body can create healthy tissue while healing)

God Bless,

Dr. D