Originally posted Dec. 1, 2004 by Jaime Hunt, Public Relations Coordinator, NWHSU, at the link below.


"Tom Spicer stared at the 9-year-old boy lying on his table. It was his first patient at La Clinica de Mariposa in Costa Rica and the only thing he could think was, "Oh, no!"

Contorted with cerebral palsy and mentally retarded, Phillip was a far cry from the patients Dr. Spicer, a November 2004 chiropractic graduate from Northwestern Health Sciences University, had seen during his internships. Nothing in his training prepared him for the feeling of abject helplessness he felt as he looked at Phillip. There would be no gradual wading into chiropractic. No, Dr. Tom Spicer was thrust into his professional career - his doctorhood - by a boy who couldn't even sit up..."



Read the entire story of how four weeks in Costa Rica changed Tom Spicer's life forever.