Dr.Helene Bertrand 1.75

How And Why Dr. Bertrand Started Doing Prolotherapy
How, and why I started to do Prolotherapy,
by Helene Bertrand M.D.
I graduated from McGill medical school in 1965 and, except for a few interruptions to further my studies, to do research and to raise children, I worked as a family practitioner until September 2010. After that I limited my practice to doing prolotherapy and research. I am a certificant and an examiner for the College of Family Physicians of Canada. I teach UBC medical students as a clinical instructor and have courtesy privileges at Lions gate hospital.
One of the most frustrating facts a family practitioner must face is that he or she is often powerless to fully treat painful conditions. Often the best one can do is not to remove the source of pain but to control it. One can use anti-inflammatory medications or Tylenol, with or without narcotics. In the case of musculoskeletal pain, such as the pain that comes from sprains, tendon injuries or arthritis, I could also prescribe exercises or refer people to physiotherapy, massage therapy, or to orthopedic surgery. When it came to neck or back pain, a chiropractor could be consulted. For most of my medical career this is what I did for musculoskeletal pain.
When I was 23, and pregnant with my first child, I developed severe lower back pain. In the following years, this pain would come back every few months and last for weeks at a time. Nothing I did, including traction, physiotherapy, massage, chiropractic or exercises would get rid of it. I knew the pain came from a subluxed sacroiliac joint. This means that the sacrum, the bone at the very bottom of your spine, kept separating from the Ilium, the bone that holds your hip joint. One day, when I was plagued by this pain, I met a friend of mine, Dr. Murray Allen, a sports medicine specialist at a continuing medical education conference. I said: “my sacroiliac joint is killing me again” to which he replied: ”why don't you come to see me, I'll do prolotherapy on you?” - “ Prolo what?”, said I. Since I had tried everything else I decided to give prolotherapy a try. To my amazement, the pain disappeared completely within two days. It returned briefly two months later, and Dr. Allen treated me once again. About once a year I'll get prolotherapy ”top-ups”. I have been pain free since.
I started sending all the patients I had, who had musculoskeletal pain and we're willing to let themselves be injected, to Dr. Allen. Most of them came back to my office with a huge smile, thankful that their pain had disappeared, and that they were able to return to their normal activities.
Six months after he had treated me, Dr. Allen told me he was retiring.”You can't do that to me!” I said, “What am I going to do with all these people who are suffering?” ” Don't worry”-he replied, “I'll teach you how to do it”. Every Friday, normally my day off, I invited patients with different problems involving every part of the body, from the head to the toes, to come to my office where Dr. Allen coached me on how to do prolotherapy on them. Following these coaching sessions, I started doing prolotherapy in my office on my patients with the same gratifying results I had noticed on myself and on Dr. Allen’s patients. In order to improve my knowledge of prolotherapy, I attended many training seminars, including one where we spent a day in the anatomy lab of the medical school, as doing prolotherapy requires a superb knowledge of anatomy. You have to know where all the ligaments and tendons attach on bone so you can inject them correctly. You also have to know where all the main nerves and arteries as well as the lungs are situated as you must know how to avoid them. I am a member of the Canadian Association For Orthopedic Medicine, and the American osteopathic Association of prolotherapy integrative pain management.
With prolotherapy, I can take somebody who is “broken” and “fix” that person, witness pain disappearing, and see people returning to their normal levels of activity.