Ralph Morissette

Maintenance, Dur-A-Flex, Inc, East Hartford, CT

Ralph Morisette considers himself a “typical guy” when it comes to seeing a doctor, any doctor. “If my arm isn’t falling off the limb,” he says, “it’ll fix itself so I’ll just keep going.” So when Dr. Desmond Ebanks, Medical Director of Alternity Health Care was invited to give a presentation as part of the wellness program Ralph’s company runs, he didn’t think too much of it. “I hemmed and hawed for six months,” he admits.

As more and more co-workers came back with glowing recommendations, however, Ralph realized he couldn’t ignore what he was hearing from them. More and more of them told Ralph, ”Yeah, I saw him and I feel a lot better, I have a lot more energy, I don’t ache as much.” Since he had felt that these were also his problems, he said to himself, “Maybe I should give this a shot.”

So Ralph went to Alternity, still not expecting very much. When he got there, though, his first visit was unlike any other doctor’s visit he had ever had before. “I’m used to going to a doctor and they do their same thing which they’ve been doing forever. A quick examination, yadda yadda, oh, gee, you’re fifty years old? Ok. You need to have this done.” It all seems very automatic to Ralph.

The most important question to Ralph is also the one that it seems doctors spend the least time considering: “How do you feel?” It’s not a simple question, because how you feel changes more as you get older, “Yeah, I feel fine today, but what about tomorrow?”

Ralph’s first visit to Alternity Healthcare completely overturned his expectations. The difference between seeing his regular doctor and seeing Dr. Ebanks was, “like night and day.” He continues, “Dr. Ebanks really gets into what your numbers are and why you feel this way and what we have to fix it. He really indulges what’s wrong with you and really explains it to you.”

Ralph was also impressed with a level of attention and detail he had never experienced before, just on the initial visit. It started with a general health history questionnaire that was more extensive than any Ralph had seen before, a very thorough physical exam including a set of stress tests, and a set of blood tests that made Ralph wonder if there was a vampire hiding in the back room.

The end result of all these tests was a set of lifestyle recommendations individually tailored towards improving Ralph’s overall health. Ralph immediately reported feeling better, but what really convinced him was something he hadn’t planned for: the Halloween snowstorm last October. For the week of disruption that followed, Ralph ran out of his supplements, he ate like he used to, and generally went back to his former ways of life. He felt horrible. “Everything ached, everything hurt, I felt run down, I was just exhausted, and I shouldn’t have to feel like this.” After two weeks of being back on the regimen, he felt great again. “I don’t feel like I’m 20, but without it I felt like I was 67 instead of 57. I just feel good.”

The bottom line for Ralph is very simple, “I can’t recommend him enough.”