Hooray for CAM!

Thursday, March 20th — I can’t believe it! Woo-hoo!  Here’s what happened. The robot is set to stop its rapid-fire tapping when it has tapped 150 times, or whenever it senses that the vertebra has moved and is no longer “stuck”, whichever comes first.  Despite all my courageous words in previous posts, I admit I was feeling a tiny bit discouraged that the robot was reaching 150 so many times. That meant my bones weren’t really moving much, especially around the neck. This afternoon Dr. Klein set the robot to put more pressure on all areas of my spine — 20 at the neck, 25 at the shoulders, and 30 lower on the back — and magic happened at last!  Emily, another of Dr. Klein’s wonderful, lovely assistants, was reading out the numbers on the laptop screen as the doctor moved the robot down my back. I think there were only two times when we actually hit 150 today, and the robot was stopping at 27! 52! 39!  I could feel a huge smile spreading across my face, and I think I “woo-hoo”ed a couple of times, as well.  I was so happy that progress could actually be seen… I shouldn’t say “at last,” because after all, it’s only been two weeks since we began; but okay, AT LAST! What’s more, the increased pressure wasn’t even uncomfortable.  I couldn’t have stood it two weeks ago, that’s for sure, but I didn’t mind it a bit today.  Okay!  Now we are off and running!

When I did my leg lifts this morning on my yoga table at home, using straps to hold the legs up for a minute or two to stretch out the hamstrings, I ended that exercise with some ankle pumps back and forth. I also bent the knees and brought the legs back and forth a few times on each side. My hope was that it might help reduce the edema in my feet. It may well have done so. Unfortunately, Dr. Klein was frantically busy, with many patients in process and waiting, and a couple of little kids howling in the waiting room, so he didn’t notice the edema and couldn’t tell me, when I asked afterwards, whether it was less.  No worries — that’s how it goes. I’ll try again Monday.

I think I’ll start referring to the robot as CAM, which is what they call it in the office.  It stands for Chiropractic Adjustment Machine — whaddaya know!  It seems a bit friendlier to give it a name.