Let's Talk About You
Women's Natural Health and Wellness
The Lotus Center For Healing
Dr. Susanne Davis
Let's Talk About You
Women's Natural Health and Wellness
Chiropractic Physician
The Lotus Center For Healing
Dr. Susanne Davis
(480)650-4459
My story began when I was quite young, growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania, a life filled with music. That was the life I was supposed to follow. My heart told me otherwise much to the consternation of my parents. After my summer working in the County Institution, which, by the way, approached One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest back in those days, something began to burn in my heart as I tended to those 'inmates' as a teenager about to enter my musical college performing arts career. I couldn't forget what I felt for those patients. It haunted me. I wanted to reach out with my hands and heart and bring less suffering to them. That became my dream and the path I followed.
I did eventually leave my music career around 1975, securing a secretarial job at the University of Pennsylvania. Being able to take classes for free was a beautiful perk for me. Sitting under the oaks while studying one crisp October afternoon, I had a vision. It was one of those experiences that is so strong you do not question it, you accept it and it stays with you the rest of your life. It remains surrealistic to this day - I was to be a doctor.
My work is based on compassion because I believe
it is possible to reach out and help those who hurt,
to lessen the pain and suffering in this world.
My Story of Why I Followed This Path ~
Staring out over the U of Pa. Hospital roof watching golden fall leaves fall, I laughed ~ and then I began to cry. It felt so completely impossible, yet my heart pounded and my mind was spinning. I caught my train to East Oak Lane and went home to tell my mother I was going to be a doctor.
One of my professors was an awesome woman who had defected from Poland and had become tenured with the College of Medicine at Penn' in Biophysics and Pharmacology. I was mesmerized by Dr. Maria Erecinska , absorbed every word she said, and when our program was done, I couldn't bear to leave her. She was looking for another tech,' would I like to come to work for her. You could have peeled me off the ceiling, I was going to work for Dr. E!! And I did for another four years, attended classes for my new work, was sent to Bristol England to do research with our compatriots there. My work became early work in cytochrome research, and mitochondrial and cellular function while taking classes for free at one of the best medical colleges in the country. Dr. Maria had changed my life. God had truly blessed me. I was going to be a doctor.
As with all things, change is inevitable, and I felt a strong urge for clinical work. Research is amazing when done well, but I was craving people ~ clinical setting ~ maybe even patients. Dr. E was not pleased, wanted me to apply for my PhD in Biophysics and be her doctoral student. I rebelled. And so did she.
During my work at Penn,' I had met my husband while we were singing with the Philadelphia Orchestra doing the Mozart Requiem. Two years later we married. He saw my restlessness to move forward in my work, and supported my applications to Neuropsych' at Penn,' and to Palmer College of Chiropractic in Iowa. We'd decided whoever accepted me first, would get us.
In my earlier days, women were not given priority into medical schools, and a woman in her mid-twenties was definitely out of the ball park. Women's Medical had a wait-list and Jefferson Med' had a massive law suit going on by women who had been rejected. Palmer took me first, so we decided to pack up and head to Iowa.
My life took on a very different meaning. My 4.0 chemistry average was challenged to the core in chiropractic school. We studied the same books, classes, cadaver labs and pathologies as medical students. Med' students study pharmacology and surgery. We studied techniques, massive hours of neuropathology, and neuroanatomy. Radiology was one of my faves always.
My hubby and I had been medics in the 'burbs where we lived near Philly. When we got to Iowa, we became paramedics. I became nationally certified after attending the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and became a preceptor for the program. I remained a full street medic til I left Iowa. This work supported me while I went to Palmer.
Paramedic work affected me like nothing else I've ever done. It taught me the human condition. It brought me a whisper's breath between life and death with many of the people I touched, calling a code at midnight and delivering twins in the back of the ambulance at 3 am. It was not without its dangers. Guns were drawn on us, knives were drawn, we were punched, kicked, and became part of hostage stand-off situations. All in the name of saving lives. Rape cases, murders, burn victims and criminals. There I was in the middle of it. I was going to be a doctor! And this work was showing me why and what it would mean someday soon. This was real. This was life.
We are so amazingly fragile, people. The human condition is just a hair's breath between life and death. Life is so precious to us. I was part of that spinning top for so many I touched. My heart loved every single one I encountered, even the offenders. They too were God's children. I was not there to judge, but to deliver each of them from one side of a nightmare many times, to something more real and a chance for good. In a space in time, experiencing something so incredibly precious - LIFE - in every conceivable form imaginable.
In December 1986 I graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic. I'd done it. I was a doctor. I moved to Arizona in 1988 and opened practice. What I learned 'in the field' has given me a very deep compassion for every patient I have seen in 30
years in practice here. I have not lost that feeling of suspended life spinning between me and every one I've met. Caring for my patients at last years later, two divorces, illness, and hardships I cannot go into here, I was finally a doctor. A holistic doctor. A doc' who respected western medicine, yet knew its boundaries after my own experience as it failed me years ago. I'd fought the odds, and there were many tears along the way, I never lost sight of my dream. To serve this planet. To reach out, touch, and help lessen pain and suffering.
We are all one in our endeavors to help our patients - our fellow man - this planet and all life forms. I am only a small part, feeling strongly for my fellow beings. Compassion. Non-judgement, always striving to understand if that is possible. And to let go when it is necessary.
People everywhere need to know they are okay ~ they are loved in some way ~ that they are inherently good. This is my story, why I have followed this path. A path of compassion. And absolutely every day has fascinated me more than the last one.
Namaste ~
2023 Dr. J. Susanne Davis
The Lotus Center for Healing
62 N. Stapley Drive
Mesa, AZ 85203
