Kathleen K. Petrucci, D.C., adores her work as a helper and a healer. Ironically, she credits a traumatic childhood experience from a Fourth of July family party for putting her on the path to a decades-long career. Just six years old at the time, she was playing on a swing set with an older cousin when she fell and landed on a seesaw. The blow knocked the wind out of her. Out of an abundance of caution, her parents took her to a chiropractor’s office near her father’s place of business. “The chiropractor had a neuropatholator on the wall that illustrated the link between the spine, the nervous system, and how it affects the entire body,” she recalls. “I loved the idea that everything in the body was connected. My mother says I turned around and said, ‘This is what I want to do when I grow up.’” She stayed true to her word. Two years after earning her doctorate from Logan College of Chiropractic in St. Louis, Dr. Petrucci founded Optimal Health Center in Yardley. She has since spent nearly three decades using her ever-growing expertise to help patients. Optimal Health Center’s purpose: to inspire and educate others to live a longer, healthier life by teaching people how to eat, move, think, and sleep better. “Before chiropractic school, I worked for two different types of chiropractor,” she says. “My experience allowed me to be a patient first, then an assistant, and then a chiropractor myself. Even though I have been practicing for 30 years, I have almost 50 years of experience in this environment. It’s a job, but it’s really a way of life.” Optimal Health Center treats various musculoskeletal and soft-tissue conditions through traditional chiropractic care, as well as modern-day interventions such as spinal decompression, extracorporeal shockwave therapy, and pulsed e