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Marshall Chiropractic in Tulsa Oklahoma


Doctor Was Led to His Career By an Accident

By CHARLENE SCOTT
Contributing Writer

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS: Dr. Ryan D. Marshall, a chiropractor, examines a replica of a spine. Marshall was led to his profession following an auto accident that injured him and his fiancée, Holly, now his wife. Following his recovery, Marshall changed his mind about the course of his college studies and future career.

CHARLENE SCOTT for GTR Newspapers

Dr. Ryan D. Marshall’s life was changed dramatically when he and his fiancee accidentally were hit by an automobile while they were college students—and later led to recovery by a chiropractor.

Now Marshall is a chiropractor himself who recently opened an office in Tulsa, Marshall Chiropractic & Wellness Center at 6703 E. 81st St., Suite E.

Born and reared in Tulsa and a graduate of Wright Christian Academy, Marshall was a student at Oklahoma State University when he and his future wife, Holly, were involved in the accident.

“We had eaten at another dorm and were out walking,” he recalls. “We stopped at a crosswalk and were starting across. My dad had been a police officer for 29 years, and he always told me to watch the drivers in cars to see where they are looking.

“We were halfway through the crosswalk when I saw a woman in her car glancing in the opposite direction. I thought immediately that we shouldn’t be where we were. She gunned the car to move into traffic – and we were standing right there.”

The driver of the car didn’t see the couple until it was too late.

“I went up on the hood of the car and grabbed the inside of the hood to hold on,” Marshall remembers. “Holly was worse off than I was. She was hollering, and we think one of her legs was run over. She had a tire mark on her jeans, and has a permanent scar on her knee.”

Holly was in a wheel chair for two weeks and went into rehabilitation for her injuries. Marshall, on the other hand, thought he was uninjured at first. But he was wrong.

“Three days later, I couldn’t move my neck,” he explains. “It was pretty scary. Holly’s family had a friend who was a chiropractor who helped both of us, and without his adjustments, I don’t think my wife and I would be the same today.”

Marshall and his wife fully recovered and are the parents of a baby daughter, Emily Faith. Following his recovery, Marshall changed his mind about the course of his college studies and his future career.

“I found out how effective chiropractic treatment can be,” he says. “Chiropractic adjustments are the foundation of health. A person needs adjustments to stay healthy.”

Marshall had been a business major at Tulsa Community College for two years, but changed his major to pre-med studies at OSU. He then attended Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas for three years.

Marshall calls chiropractic care “still a young profession” and points out that it was not founded in the United States until the early 1900s.

“Fifty years ago, not everybody went to dentists,” he says, “and it’s the same with chiropractic care today. More and more people are realizing they need to go to a chiropractor to prevent the degenerative process of the spine.”

A chiropractic treatment is not the same as a massage, Marshall notes.

“A masseuse works on the muscles, but chiropractors are experts in the care of bones, nerves, muscles and connective tissues that make up 60 percent of your body,” he says.

“Every man, woman and child should be checked by a chiropractor at least four times a year in order to maintain proper spinal curves and disc spaces. There are 24 movable segments in the spine, and if one is not moving, the spine is misaligned.”

Spinal degeneration is related to the same process that the body uses to mend a broken bone. The body attempts to fuse the adjacent spinal bones together. That’s why a person in a car wreck needs to go to a chiropractor, Marshall says.

A member of the American Chiropractic Association, he does a free scan of the spine during an initial visit. A full neurological exam and possible X-rays each are offered for a fee. Persons with Medicare, PPOs or open insurance plans do not need a referral, but persons with HMOs must be referred by a physician.

“If a person is a cash patient, we are able to work with them with a medical savings card of 25 percent off,” he says. “Our first goal is to help people.”

For more information, call Marshall at (918) 494-0929.