South Carolina Center for Integrative Medicine

Who we are and why we’re doing it.

A few years ago, a 24 year old man was diagnosed with degenerative disks and the only way out (according to the fine doctors at an unnamed Army hospital) was to operate on his spine and fuse a few disks together. This was a guaranteed track towards a cane and/or a wheelchair. His wife, Kim, had just graduated from school as a Physician’s Assistant and was working hard at an ear, nose, and throat practice in upstate New York and about to give birth to their first child. She was doing great but was getting frustrated that she wasn’t actually healing anyone. She was prescribing the right meds and the patients would be back a few weeks later for a new course of different meds or a new medication to help with the symptoms of the other medications. Together, they realized that something was wrong and they started looking for options.

After three weeks under the care of a chiropractor only doing nutritional supplements and dietary changes, Nathan’s back was better than it had been in five years. Our daughter was six months old and Kim was working part time at a pediatric urgent care. She loves pediatrics and she enjoyed the pace but was continuing to be frustrated that some patients just kept coming back for the same problems. “Why?”

Dr. Vianna asked a one word question that would change the trajectory of our lives. What if simply following accepted medical protocols wasn’t enough? What if there was a way to incorporate what Kim had learned about nutrition into what she had learned about medicine?

Kim jumped down the rabbit hole and we’ve been diving ever since. Because of that, our goal is, and always will be, to provide a medical office where decisions about patient’s health care are made by provider and patient and the goal isn’t to hide symptoms or simply feel better but to actually be better. To provide a pediatrician’s office that we would take our kids to and know that they are safe and well provided for. In short, we are building the relationships with our patients that doctors go into medicine to have but too often lose after being abused by the current medical model.