As many of you have seen, I've officially made my transition to the doctor floor. With this new chapter at The Premier Life, I thought I'd share a little more about myself so you can better understand who I am, what motivated my passion for chiropractic, and hopefully take away a little knowledge that you can share with friends and family.
My roots are in Terre Haute, but I've lived a little bit of everywhere in Indiana. I've spent some time in Lafayette, graduated high school in Richmond, and finished my clerkship in South Bend. For college, I attended Indiana Wesleyan and Wilmington College in Ohio each for two years, playing baseball at both schools and graduating with degrees in biology and chemistry. For chiropractic school, I attended Campbellsville University in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where I also met my wife, Mallory. Faith and family, sports, and the human body are still my main passions.
I had another internal motivator as well. Two weeks before I graduated high school, I began having seizures. There was no previous history and no known trigger. To describe an episode, I would get a horrible headache, my entire right side would become numb, and most times I would experience full-body convulsions. Thankfully, I have no memory of the actual episodes. After extensive testing, doctors discovered a Grade 1 glioma in my brain. For reasons related to its location, it occupies enough space to disrupt normal neurological function and trigger these episodes.
Because of this finding, I started taking medication in an effort to prevent further damage to my brain. None of it worked. Anything and everything that was tried failed and actually made me feel worse than before starting the medication. I experienced horrible side effects with sleeping, brain fog, depression, and eating. I genuinely felt like I was living life under a dark cloud, all while continuing to have episode after episode. At one point, I was experiencing 60–100 a month.
During those first two years of college, I remember being absolutely exhausted and feeling like defeat was inevitable. Feeling unworthy, I called out in prayer. I asked for perspective and the ability to understand what I was going through. For the first time, the cloud lifted. My mindset flipped from a selfish "How could you do this to me?" to "How can I impact others today?" That shift in perspective changed the direction of my life. It was what ultimately led me to abandon my pursuit of neurosurgery and begin looking for other ways to serve.
After deciding to step away from that pursuit, I moved home to Lafayette to coach baseball while trying to figure out what the next chapter of life would look like. I had the opportunity to do some coaching at a lower level with the Cincinnati Reds, but more importantly, I was able to be home and coach my younger brother's baseball team during his senior year alongside my dad, who was the head coach. It was such a special time for us as a family. But eventually, that chapter closed, and the uncertainty of my calling crept back in.
After another season of deep prayer, I saw a friend post on social media that he was going to chiropractic school. At that moment, I felt called to be there too. I saw chiropractic as an opportunity to make an impact on the nervous system, help people avoid unnecessary limitations, and allow them the ability to continue pursuing the activities they love. I impatiently sent over my transcripts that afternoon, and by the next morning, I was enrolling. The rest is history.
My hope in sharing this story is to show how powerful life can be when driven by faith and family. When you use that lens to look at life, you won't even have to turn the handle of the next door God is calling you to walk through. He will have it standing wide open, leading you toward the purpose He has for you.
As your servant,
Dr. Austin Turner
