82-Year-Old Back Pain Success Story
An eighty-two-year-old patient's course of chiropractic care and spinal decompression, and what changed.
Your journey
Chronic pain treatment in Marietta for people who have already tried everything
You do not need another provider who is optimistic. You need one who will examine you properly, read your imaging with you, and tell you honestly whether this is treatable here.
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The problem
You have a file, and a fair suspicion that this is the fifth opinion
Most people who reach this page have a file. Years of appointments, several diagnoses that did not agree with each other, imaging nobody sat down and explained, and a growing suspicion that the next provider will do what the last four did.
So the first thing worth saying, before you spend anything with a chronic pain chiropractor in Marietta or anywhere else, is the uncomfortable thing: some chronic pain does not resolve, and some of it is not a chiropractic problem at all. If yours is one of those, we would rather tell you at the first visit than take three months of your money finding out. What we can offer is an examination thorough enough to know the difference, and a plain answer at the end of it.
Your challenges
What years of this actually does
Tap the ones that sound like you and the rest of this page narrows to match. Choose none and you will see everything we treat.
Our solutions
What we would actually try, and in what order
Nothing here is offered as a cure-all. Each has a presentation it suits and presentations it does not, and the examination decides which applies to you.
Candidacy first, and it is sometimes a no
Roughly speaking, the presentations that do well here are mechanical, reproducible on testing, and have not yet been through a definitive structural failure. The ones that do poorly involve significant instability, progressive neurological loss, advanced multi-level degeneration, or a driver that is genuinely systemic rather than mechanical.
You will be told which group you appear to be in, what the plan would be, and what the re-test date is. If we take you on and the measurements have not moved by then, the plan changes or you get referred — because after everything you have already spent, more of the same on a longer timescale is not a treatment.
Recognize yourself
Sound familiar?
The presentations we see most often in people with long-standing pain, and what an examination looks for in each one.
Why nothing has worked yet is usually a diagnostic problem, not a willpower problem
Long-standing pain very often has more than one driver: a mechanical restriction, a sensitized nervous system that now reacts to smaller inputs than it used to, and a pattern of avoidance that has deconditioned the area. Treating one of the three explains most of the partial successes in your history. The injection worked because it addressed inflammation. Therapy worked because it addressed capacity. Neither addressed the other two, so the relief expired.
It also matters that pain persisting for years is not the same problem as pain in its first month, even at the same site. The tissue may well have healed. What is producing the signal now can be joint restriction, adhesion in the soft tissue, nerve irritation, central sensitization, or some combination — and those are distinguishable on examination.
Screener
Before you spend anything, check whether this is even our problem
Twelve questions on your symptom pattern and history. It will tell you if this looks like a chiropractic case, if it looks like something needing a physician first, or if it is genuinely unclear.
What happens next
What the first ninety days look like
Getting off the medication is a goal we take seriously
Many people here want out of a daily prescription more than they want to be pain-free, and that is a reasonable priority. Reducing medication is something you do with the prescribing physician, not around them, and we will coordinate rather than advise you to stop anything.
What conservative care can contribute is lowering the amount of pain that needs managing in the first place. That has to come first; the reduction follows it, not the other way around.
- Visit one
A long examination and your imaging reviewed with you
Full history including everything already tried, functional testing, and your scans read alongside your symptom pattern rather than in isolation. This visit is deliberately longer than a standard new-patient appointment.
- End of visit one
A candidacy answer, including no
You are told which of your findings appear to be driving the symptoms, whether conservative care is a reasonable attempt, and what would need to be true for it to work. If the answer is that you need imaging, a physician or a surgical opinion first, you get that instead of a treatment plan.
- Weeks one to six
The trial, with baselines on record
Objective measurements taken at the start — ranges of motion, provocative tests, walking or sitting tolerance, sleep. The plan targets the specific driver identified, not a generic protocol.
- Around week six, and again at twelve
Re-test, and a decision
The same measurements, compared. Improving means we continue and then taper. Not improving means the plan changes once, and if that does not move it either, you are referred on with our findings in writing.
Technology we use for this
Technology that guides your care
Your imaging gets read with you, not filed
Almost everyone in this group has scans, and almost nobody has had them explained. Two things usually need saying. First, findings that sound alarming — degeneration, bulges, arthritic change — are present in large numbers of people your age who have no pain at all, so a finding is not automatically a cause. Second, the reverse is also true: a scan can be unremarkable while a genuine mechanical problem is producing real symptoms.
The useful work is matching findings to your actual symptom pattern. Bring what you have, including reports from other providers. If something in it needs a specialist rather than us, that is a legitimate and useful outcome of the visit.
Cold Laser / Low-Level Laser Therapy
Light the tissue absorbs, at low power.
Electrical Muscle Stimulation & Interferential Current
Interrupting a pain signal and a muscle spasm.
Class IV Robotic MLS Laser Therapy
Two wavelengths, and enough power to reach a hip.
Computerized Spinal & Nervous System Analysis
Measuring nervous system function, not guessing at it.
Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEMF) Therapy
A pulsed field, and cells that respond to it.
High-Energy Inductive Therapy (HEIT)
Deep magnetic field where hands cannot reach.
IASTM (Graston-Style) Instruments
A steel edge finding what a thumb cannot.
Corrective Spinal Traction & Orthotics
Remodeling a curve takes time and a specific load.
Video
Our doctors on camera
Feeling Trapped by Pain? It's Time to Break Free
For anyone who has decided that chronic pain is simply their new normal.
Written by our clinicians
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Unedited Google reviews
From patients who arrived having already tried everything
Dr. Plasker really cares about his patients. He took time out of his day (outside of office hours) to ensure that I received the best care and understood what was going on with my spine. I suffer from chronic migraine headaches and he was able to pinpoint the cause, and give me a plan. I love this w…
Met Eric & Cory @ the Taste of East Cobb. Was skeptical at first, but they answered all my questions. Setup my initial appointment. Went it with a stiff neck & bad. To look either way I would have to turn my body. Now 2+ weeks in, can look both ways without having to move my body too. Back is not st…
I was always a little skeptical but after I started going on a regular basis I feel so much better & it’s keeping me on the tennis courts!
Questions patients ask
The questions people with long-standing pain actually ask
I have had a failed back surgery. Is there anything left to try?
Sometimes, and it depends heavily on what was done and what the current examination shows. Fusion changes the mechanics of the segments above and below it, and those adjacent segments are frequently where the ongoing pain is coming from — which is treatable. Instrumentation, instability, or a nerve that was already compromised are different matters. This is a case where we need the operative report and the imaging before saying anything useful.
How is this different from the last four providers?
Two concrete things rather than a promise. First, you get a candidacy answer at the first visit, including a no, based on findings we will show you. Second, we take objective baselines and re-test them on a stated date, so a plateau is visible in six weeks rather than after nine months. Neither is remarkable. It is just uncommon.
Will an adjustment even be safe with my degeneration?
The technique is matched to the findings. Where a forceful manual adjustment is inappropriate — significant degeneration, osteoporosis, instability, recent surgery — there are low-force instrument and drop-table options, and non-surgical decompression works without any thrust at all. If your findings call for something outside our range, we will say so at the examination and help you get to the right care.
What will this cost me before I know whether it is going to work?
You get the examination cost up front, and the examination itself is what produces the candidacy answer. That means the amount you have to spend before finding out whether this is worth pursuing is one visit, not a package. We do not sell prepaid long-term plans to new patients.
Can you get me off the pain medication?
Not directly, and anyone who says otherwise is overreaching. Dose changes belong with your prescribing physician. What conservative care can do is reduce the underlying pain so there is less to manage, which is the part that has to happen before a taper is realistic. We will write to your physician with our findings if that helps.
My pain moves around and no scan has ever shown anything. What then?
That pattern — widespread, shifting, unremarkable imaging, poor sleep, fatigue — points more toward a sensitized nervous system than a single structural fault, and it needs a different approach: graded activity, sleep and stress work, gentle manual care rather than aggressive treatment, and often co-management. It is also the presentation most likely to have been dismissed. It is real, and it is not treated by looking harder for a structural lesion.
Get an honest answer, including if it is no
One long examination in Marietta, your imaging reviewed with you, and a straight statement of whether this is treatable here.