Meet C. Leslie Smith of Chicago Healing Center in Edgewater

Today we’d like to introduce you to C. Leslie Smith.

Leslie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I decided I wanted to become a doctor when I was about 5 or 6 years old during a conversation with my father while we were watching a spider spin a web. As I watched physicians interact with patients growing up, I knew that I didn’t want to be the kind of doctor who couldn’t talk to people aside from distributing facts and diagnoses. So when it was time to choose a major, I studied Literature: the gateway to putting yourself inside of someone else’s experiences and living in their shoes. I then decided to go to graduate school for a Master’s in Physiology and Biophysics, both to decide whether I wanted to pursue the MD/PhD route and also to bolster my knowledge of hard sciences. In medical school, I was a little outside the path of a typical medical student: I had lived overseas for 4 years, was a bit older, had an odd focus of undergraduate study (my senior thesis focused on reading poetry through the lens of quantum physics), and was already deeply involved in the political life of the university as a hold-over from graduate school. I started with one class and graduated with another so that I could finish my Master’s and defend my thesis: I therefore had some close friends, but didn’t really bond the way that many of my colleagues did in school. It was a bit lonely. When I matched into general surgery, I was thrilled, but ultimately I discovered that I had made a poor choice for my residency. I became very isolated and depressed and spent a lot of my time trying to figure out what to do about my situation. In my 4th year of residency (out of 5 needed to finish), I developed a condition called “radial tunnel syndrome”: inflammation of one of the large nerves that goes down the forearm and into the hands, controlling many of the muscles one needs to operate. I was in excruciating pain for many weeks–but ignored it like any “good” doctor and continued to work–until one morning I woke up and my right hand was so swollen and painful that it would not move at all. I was terrified. I spent weeks in bilateral arm splints, unable to function (drive, brush my teeth, write, or sleep) due to the pain. Physical therapy, pain medicines, massage, and extensive testing failed to proffer any relief. Someone then suggested that I try acupuncture. Not only did it help with the pain, but it gave me an emotional release from the years of isolation and disappointment as well as from the more recent terror of losing the function of my hands. The program where I was forced me to resign from my residency before I could fully recover, but ultimately it was a blessing in disguise. My husband sold his business and we moved from Illinois to California–a new job for him and a new set of school for me. I went to acupuncture medical school for 3 years and healed from many of the wounds created by becoming a doctor. I then moved back to Chicago and began practicing as an acupuncturist and integrative medicine physician in 2012. I have recently expanded my practice to include a community acupuncture clinic and educational center. I also get to teach medical students at the same school where I attended and am writing research protocols and working to open the doors of hospitals to having acupuncture available to admitted patients and patients in the ER.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Medical school was a struggle. Residency was a greater struggle. We compare the level of knowledge that you have to have to pass classes and get through residency to that of drinking from a fire hose. That is precisely what it feels like. The breadth, depth, and volume of facts pushed at you in training are massive. And that was made worse by the lack of camaraderie that I felt much of the time. It makes me really appreciate the collegiality, warmth, and support that are characteristic of my current daily life and interactions.

I had planned to become a trauma surgeon at the end of my training and suddenly I found myself a small business owner in an avant-garde field of medicine. I was completely unprepared for that, and I made more than a few mistakes in the beginning. I undervalued myself and my time. I moved offices multiple times before settling in Uptown/Edgewater. I sublet space from a real jerk right off the bat. But I also made some good choices: a consistent electronic health record, a Google voice phone number that ports with me wherever I am, and generally very good hiring choices. My staff currently are exceptional people. So it works out, but being a small business owner is challenging to say the least. I couldn’t afford to pay myself out of the clinical work for several years and had to support myself by doing other things on top of the clinic. I was grateful when I could let go of some of those other jobs 2 years ago.

Please tell us about Chicago Healing Center.
The moniker that I chose when I opened Chicago Healing Center is “where healing begins with begin heard.” I believe in this strongly. So many patients come to see me because “regular” medicine has failed them. They often have a symptom or situation that has been tested but because nothing shows up on the testing: as a result, they have no diagnosis, and so nothing is done. They are frustrated and feel that no one is listening to them or believing them. This is of course not really the fault, per se, of western medicine; it is a function of training. It is hard to know what else to offer beyond pharmaceuticals and surgery/procedures if that is the scope of your training. I am fortunate that those components are no longer the only parts of my training: I can use acupuncture, herbal medicines, food as medicine, specialized massage techniques, cupping, gua sha, lasers, meditation, osteopathic release techniques and many other modalities to facilitate healing. But the first part of healing is listening with an open heart to the story of the patient and understanding their journey. Only then can you begin to help them in the process of healing.

Because I don’t take insurance, I have the luxury of time. I get to spend a full hour listening to their concerns, and then at least 15 minutes explaining the person’s story back to them in the context of Asian medicine so that they understand why their body is behaving the way that it is. Together, we then develop a treatment plan and begin the process of unpacking their symptoms (pain, insomnia, digestive issues, menstrual problems, dizziness, etc.). I also ask all of my patients to do homework–the lifestyle tweaks/changes and personal exploration outside of our clinic time together.

I am most proud of the real healing that happens when the potent mixture of partnership, exploration and change comes together: my patients find that suddenly they don’t need their blood pressure medications, their pain is gone, their gut works, they are sleeping through the night, and their energy level is back. We partner with their primary care doctors to wean them off of the pharmaceuticals or other support that they needed previously. It is exciting and deeply fulfilling to participate in this process.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
For half of my childhood, my father was in the military. For the 8 years he was out, we lived in Colorado, where we were used to big snowstorms. I remember many times walking to school along a path where the snow was piled so high on either side of me that I couldn’t see over it. When he went back into the Army, we moved to Kentucky. They would cancel school from a tiny spit of snow and it made all of us giggle. But that second year in Kentucky, we had a huge snowstorm, and we spent the whole day jumping off of the deck into the big piles of snow.

Pricing:

• Initial consult and treatment (2 hours) is $410.
• Follow up consult and treatment (1 hour) is $146.
• Treatments in community acupuncture clinic are $55 with discounts for Medicare, Medicaid, and VA patients.

Contact Info:

• Address: 4753 N Broadway St, Suite 810
  Chicago, IL 60640
  (Community Acupuncture Clinic is same address, Suite 812)
• Website: LeslieSmithMD.com and ChicagoHealingCenter.com
• Phone: 773-609-3520
• Email: LeslieTCM@gmail.com
• Twitter: @CLeslieSmith and @Chicago_Healing
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/leslie-smith-md-chicago and https://www.yelp.com/biz/chicago-healing-center-chicago

Image Credit:
Angela Garbot
Leslie Smith