Catching Up

Monday, April 14th – How can this BE?? I haven’t made any new postings to this blog in a couple of weeks. I guess Life just caught up with me, and now I have some catching up to do myself.

Here are some of the highlights since the last posting:

• Cheng Cheng presented me with the graph of my re-test. Wow! I felt like having it framed and hanging it on the wall. (Are you over-reacting a little teensy bit, Betsy? Naaah, anybody would feel this way!) It’s a straight diagonal line UP, no bumps, at what appears to be approximately a 45-degree angle. The legend tells me it shows I have recovered 26.1% of a possible 90% functionality. Cervical (neck) vertebrae are no longer misaligned, thoracic (shoulder and chest area) vertebrae are no longer misaligned, lumbar (lower back) rotation is no longer limited to the left. In English, that means I can twist from the waist to the left, but twisting to the right is still limited. Looks like there is still work to be done there. More work to be done, I see, in the sacral area (lowest back, down by the tailbone), the shoulders, and the feet; but I can live with that, as I watch the improvements happening. After I’ve completed 12 more sessions, there will be another re-test, and I am confidently expecting to find that I’ve improved 50%!!
• Dr. Klein has started working on my spine on the stationary chiropractic table, manually, instead of just using CAM while I am sitting up. This means I have to arrange myself prone on the table: not a graceful process, I can tell you. I hate lying with my face in a paper-covered groove. I can breathe, that’s the purpose of the groove; but when he says, “Take a BIIIIIG breath,” I get a mouthful of that paper. It’s a little bit more crisp than toilet paper (kind of like the European toilet paper I remember from a trip to Spain in 1960 !), but still soft enough to get in the way of comfy breathing. Then Dr. Klein says, “Okay, now FLIP OVER onto your back.” Ha ha ha! “Flip” is hardly in my vocabulary; what I do is more like LUMBER over. It’s like some hippopotamus who’s been having a nice mud bath and now turns herself over to do the other side. It’s rather embarrassing, actually. But hey — a couple of months ago, I couldn’t even do this, so I shouldn’t complain, I suppose.
• The Feet… oh, the feet, especially the right one! The first time David Klein worked on that foot with his hands, he made an awful face and said, “Oh my god, it feels like a block of wood attached to your leg!” I guess the bones inside are all stuck together. I knew I couldn’t wiggle my toes any more, and I knew I couldn’t rotate my ankle. But why, I wonder, did the orthopedic guys say there was nothing to be done to relieve the pain in that foot except FUSION? If the bones are already fused, in effect, what good would that do? I would rather take a chance that David’s going to be able to break up some of the cartilage adhesions and get the bones moving again. If, a year or so from now, he tells me he’s done all he can for that foot, and if it’s still all stuck and wooden, then maybe I will think about surgical fusion. But I bet that won’t be the case, because already… already!… I am seeing my toes move a bit, and the ankle and foot are less painful. This chiropractic stuff feels like some kind of miracle to me. Or maybe it’s just magic, and David Klein is the wizard. (Oh yeah, forgot to mention — he’s working away on the left foot too. Maybe I’ll end up with a matched pair again.)
• The Shoulders: these were the guys that were going to have to be surgically replaced within the next couple of years, remember? Well, almost without realizing when it happened, I can now twist around in the driver’s seat and put my right arm along the back of the passenger seat, and look out the back window to see if any cars are about to mow into me. (This is critical when trying to back out of parallel parking in front of Seaside Chiropractic, since the entire street is being torn up for a huge “improvement project,” and the lane is very tight.) They both still burn and scream at me when I move just a fraction of an inch too far, but they’re getting better. They are getting better. There’s another miracle. I would bet good money that I won’t need to have those surgeries done. David Klein is pretty certain he can restore enough range of motion and mobility, and reduce the pain enough, that I won’t need replacements.

Where in the world has CHIROPRACTIC been all my life? Or where have I been, not seeing that chiropractic was there?

Okay, that’s enough wallowing. I am now officially Caught Up. I want to thank some great folks for taking the time to read this blog, and posting comments. Seaside Emily, here’s to you (clink!) — and dk, l’chaim to you. You guys are the best.