Learning with a Legend...

Today I started my fourth rotation of third year. Wow.
1 month of surgery down
2 months of IM down...
and now to something COMPLETELY different! I started today with the legend in the osteopathic profession, Dr. Viola Frymann at the Osteopathic Center for Children. Dr. Frymann is arguably the greatest living osteopath, having studied with William Garner Sutherland himself and she has outlived Anne Wales and other pioneers. Amazingly, she still practices 4 days a week and it's evident how she's devoted her life's work to osteopathy and the health of children.

Some highlights of Day 1:
-A patient from japan and another from Italy. Children and families travel to the Osteopathic Center for Children from all over the world with obscure developmental problems. They are never turned away based on their ability to pay and Dr. Frymann's charity, Osteopathy's Promise to Children, raises money for this and providing housing for those who come from all over the world.
-Dr. Frymann begins every interaction by talking with the child, she always asks please and thank you and she flashes her smile. The patient may be crying and thrashing at the beginning of the treatments, but over time with her assistant Anna holding onto clothes and using toys to distract as she treats, the child calms. It's amazing to see the response to the osteopathic treatments. Her goal: Giving every child the chance to achieve their fullest potential.
-I asked her after a treatment about one of the hand positions "Dr. Frymann, what are you treating with that hand position? I didn't recognize it." "The patient, of course," she replied with a smile. "He has two orbits."
-A large part of her success, in my mind, is that the parents aren't in the room during these treatments. In the room today was Dr. Frymann, myself, Anna her assistant, and Lilya, the piano player. Everything is focused on the child she is treating, and appointment times are very flexible as each child gets the treatment.
-Lastly, the music is AMAZING. Dr. Frymann calls out different classical music composers that Lilya plays. "I think you'd like some Scarliatti today" she remarks as she begins treating one little girl. And Japanese children's songs for the child from Japan.

I palpated the head during one especially cooperative little boy today while she treated his pelvis. He has a genetic mutation of PLP1 causing Pelizaeus-Merzbacher-disease, an XLR disorder that I only heard about briefly in my genetics training. After the treatment, his CRI released amazingly, and we "walked" him out with Anna holding him by the arms and me crawling along the floor, moving his feet and bending his knees as he stepped along. When he came in, he was stiff like a board from the hypertonicity in his tissues. The smile on his face, and Dr. Frymann's motherly approval as she watched him "walk" was incredible. Not to mention his smile and laughter...

THIS is real medicine... Check out more about Dr. Viola Frymann at www.osteopathiccenter.org

As i was reading an interview in her Collected works (edited by my Professor, Hollis King) a quote especially struck me:


Our patients today may have a condition which I have chosen to call spiritual starvation. They may be people whose lives are so intensely oriented at a materialistic level, or even an intellectual level, that they do not permit the spiritual side of their natures to be expressed. This starvation affects their whole nature and can be a serious cause of disease.

The laws of nature on a spiritual level are just as precise as those at a physical level. We live by them automatically, whether or not we enunciate them, like gravity.

Spiritual laws at present must be applied to be understood: for example, the law of faith, the law of forgiveness, or the law of love. Love makes plants flourish, makes animals thrive, and makes human beings healthy. Love is the healer which is ours to give and receive. It is the most important additive to the life-diet of one who is sick. I do not know how it works, but I know it does work-always.

The applications of these laws have to be a part of the physician's armamentarium if we are really going to help the whole patient. I think we have to be scientific in the truest meaning of the word. We have tended to use the word "scientific" only in the sense of "materialistic"; the word actually means "in accordance with law."

Thousands of people are experiencing spiritual healing in spite of the physicians. We cannot afford to stand back and pretend that this does not exist; it is happening all around us. It must no longer be something separate from what we do. It is time for us, as a profession, to recognize, explore, and cooperate with the spiritual forces that are being quickened all around us. If we will form a partnership with the Great Physician, listen to his guidance, and invite Him to use our hands as His, to bring healing to this patient, the "impossible" becomes possible and patients experience profound changes during their osteopathic manipulative treatments.


I am excited and honored to have the privilege to learn with this modern master... and to explore this journey of healing on my way to becoming a physician.

Wow.