And Now for Something Completely Different…

Friday, August 15th — Welcome to my blog:  “A Skeptic’s Journey with Chiropractic.”

On Saturday, August 16th, I am hosting a game on my blog for attendees of WordPress’s WordCamp. If you are attending WordCamp, you’ll be getting more details from Dr. David Klein on Saturday morning, and I hope you will come and play The Game with me here.

So this post, just for a change, is not going to be full of chiropractic raves. Just one quick small rave, though, I beg your indulgence. I cracked one of my little toes Monday night, hapless idiot that I sometimes am.  This is something I’ve done probably 30 times or more in my life, when carelessly walking barefoot… I just come up against a chair leg or a box or something, too close, just at the corner, and my little toe goes snap! and bends out away from the others. Right away it goes numb, and that’s one way I know it’s broken: if I just bash it, it hurts like hell instantly. In the morning it, and the bit of foot that anchors the toe, are sort of olive green. And THEN it hurts.

Now, there’s really nothing to do in such a case, unless I want to splint it up against its neighboring toe with adhesive tape for a few days. I’ve done that, and I’ve also let the injured toe just do its healing thing on its own; they both work equally well, depending on how bad the break is.  This one, last Monday, was just a crack. By putting on a sandal right away, while it was numb, I could sort of push the poor little toe back where it should be.

By Wednesday afternoon, when I next saw Dr. David Klein at my favorite hangout, Seaside Chiropractic, it wasn’t too bad, just rather gross-looking. I asked him to please take it easy on that foot and not stretch out the toe, as he usually does, and I explained what had happened. So when we get to that part of the adjustment, and I am cringing in anticipation of it hurting, he says, “I’m just going to touch it very gently… does that hurt? Okay, does that hurt? Okay, we’re done.”

ME:   Hey, what did you do? It didn’t hurt!

HIM:  I just popped it back into place. I heard it pop, didn’t you?

ME:   Yeah, but I didn’t really believe it.  Jeez, you are a wizard!

And today, Friday, just five days after cracking the toe, it’s not bad at all! Still looks like a cashew, but so do both my small toes, from having been broken so many times over the decades. A green cashew.

I leave you with this thought: do you know how cashews grow? There’s a fruit in South and Central America called the maranon (pretend there’s a ~ over that middle n). It looks like a plum, and it grows on a big tree like a plum does. But what’s different is that the pit, or seed, is not inside the fruit, but rather dangling at the bottom, outside. It’s covered with a sort of fuzzy skin, and it’s shaped like a comma… or perhaps a cashew.  Yup, you got it: they harvest the things for the seeds, not the fruits. They don’t eat the fruits out of hand, as we might eat a plum, since they’re a bit nondescript and kinda sour, but they do sometimes make a preserve or jam out of them.

Hope you win the prize! Here’s looking forward to WordCamp!

Thanks for reading — Betsy