My back has been hurting every day for the past four years. I injured it while doing sit-ups with a weight on my stomach at some cardio-funk class in 2002. At the time, I pinched a nerve and was howling so bad the on-site massage therapist offered to do something about it for free just so I would shut up. I couldn't turn my head until I went to a physical therapist. This went on for three weeks. I learned at the time I had horrible posture and weak middle-back muscles. Who knew you could work out your spinal cord? I dutifully did all the exercises and now sit up reasonably straight, but still, the pain persisted.
In the last two months, it's gotten really intense. I've been doing crazy things like icing it for two hours a night and falling asleep with golf balls under my neck to try to relieve the pressure. Right now you're scratching your head and wondering why I've never just gone to a chiropractor.
Reason One: My mother told me they are quacks when I was a child. I should've known better (and she's recently recanted and told me that one of the reasons she thought this was that she lived near some chiropractic students when she was in college and they smoked pot). This is the same woman who obeys all traffic laws and believes drinking alcohol before the age of twenty-one is a worse crime than Enron. (I kid my mother - she also taught many, many useful things about health and speeding.)
Reason Two: Everyone I know who goes to a chiropractor is ADDICTED TO THE POPPING. Seriously. I didn't realize chiropractic was covered by insurance. Even as it is, it's still $35 a pop (BWAH HA HA), and they want you to go, like, twelve times if it's a one. So I was very afraid that this would turn into an expensive habit and what if, after all the monies and the pot-smoking I was still in pain? Well, WHAT IF?
But this week, it just hurt too bad. I went to a chiropractor yesterday. She was not a witch doctor, nor did she laugh dastardly when she took my fragile neck into her hands. She was a very young, very pleasant-looking redheaded woman who told me everything she was going to do and also told me that the lump I've always thought was a muscle knot is an out-of-place rib (WTF???? I forgot they attached in back) and that I have a whiplash injury. The whiplash injury has made my neck straight instead of curved, so instead of the weight of my head resting on bone, it's being held in place by my very tired and cranky neck muscles. No WONDER it hurts. I've got a rib sticking into my back muscles and a straight neck. The X-ray looked so weird I actually asked her if my head looks like it juts forward like that normally. She gave me an odd look and said no. I think she might've been lying.
Good news, though - she also said she thought it could be fixed, fixed, fixed! For the first time in four years, I allowed myself to really FEEL the pain in all its glory, so I could think about it going away. I realized I've been consciously trying to tune it out because I was deathly afraid it would be with me forever. Knowing it could leave made me realize how much it really, really fucking hurts. A lot. WAH.
I go back Saturday. She may offer me some pot or some crack or whatever they do to actually seal the addiction deal, but I don't even care. If she can fix my back, I will kiss her, even though I already inappropriately told her that if she really wants to have a baby immediately after marrying her fiance who just got out of the army today, she should try every other day on days 10 through 21 of her cycle. And then she looked at my like I was crazy again and popped my neck.
The end. Have a good weekend.
