By Michael Dorausch, DC

It’s hard to believe that these photographs are older than the planetchiropractic.com web site. They were taken in May of 1998 and the site did not launch until December of the same year. There has been audio and video online from the 1990s Panamá mission’s since a short time after the chiropractic website was launched, there have also been dozens of Panamá related news articles. I mentioned cleaning the office and finding photographs stored on hard drives and I’ll be posting some of them here for historic purposes.

Below are five different photographs from the 1998 CREW chiropractic mission to Panamá.

Dora Boyd de Perez Balladares Y La Asociacion de Quiropracticos Atienden a la Poblacion Panamena Del 25 Al 30 De Mayo De 1998 – Signs and banners like this one appeared throughout the country of Panamá during the month of May 1998. This one was posted outside a civic gymnasium in the area of Penonomé. Dora Boyd de Perez Balladares was the president’s wife (First Lady of Panamá)  when we were there for that trip. The mission was cosponsored by the government of Panamá which offered free chiropractic care to the entire country’s population.

The above photo was taken inside the same gymnasium (we provided adjustments there for five days that week). The chiropractor to the left is Dr. Paul from Canada and that’s me on the right (I have not had a goatee in many years). You may notice our skin appears a bit shiny, that’s because it was about 110° inside the gymnasium, and it was raining everyday.

Dr. Noel from Ohio sets up for a seated cervical chiropractic adjustment inside the gymnasium. In the background you can see the gymnasium grandstands. There were times that these were full, six or more chiropractors providing adjustments from nine o’clock in the morning until about two o’clock in the afternoon (the peak of heat and just before the rain came down). The top of the photo shows the tin roofs that were common in the city gymnasiums. As hot as things got in the gymnasium for us, I can still remember many people sitting down for an adjustment, and their skin felt like they had just walked out of walk-in refrigerator. They were calm and cool as anything and we were drinking mass fluids just to stay hydrated.

Kids going crazy in a Panamá school yard. Looks like some of these kids are testing their gang signs. Remember this was 1998 and I don’t think a lot of these kids had been in front of a video camera before. When we were not in the gymnasiums, we broke off into groups and provided adjustments to kids at the local schools. You can see me in the far background wearing a red shirt (all the kids are in white so I’m not hard to spot). This photo was taken during afternoon recess and the kids were going crazy in the schools center playground. We went classroom to classroom giving chiropractic adjustments to all students and teachers, a few days that week.

This last photo was taken inside the classroom at a private school. I don’t remember what grade this was (I think it was first grade) but we had an incredible experience there. When we arrived the kids were having English class so the teacher decided to have them sing a few songs for us. They did the chiropractic favorite classic… Head Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Awesome times in Panamá!