Creeping Upward

Saturday, January 30th, 2010 — Last week I had another re-exam at Seaside Chiropractic.

In March it will be two years since I made a commitment to ongoing chiropractic treatment with Dr. David Klein: two amazing years! For most of that time, with the exception of about six months during which I was toting around either

• 500 maggots embedded in my leg to clean out a large infected wound, or
• a 5-pound Wound-Vac on my shoulder –  a computerized gadget involving a suction cup and lots of plastic tubes, to encourage new tissue to form within the pit left by the Maggot Clean-Up Crew,

my re-exam charts showed a steady upward progress. It was dramatic at first, then leveled off a bit; but it was always upward, bit by bit.

Re-exams are given approximately every 12 visits. I used to have Dr. Klein’s team of sidekicks assist me in posting the graphs so I could share them with you. However, now that I’ve become such a longtime patient, the graph and its accompanying legend have to be so small to include everything that it’s hardly worth posting. I have to use my reading glasses AND a magnifying glass to get the whole picture.

So this most recent graph showed a few interesting changes. Once again my legs are “even”: for ages, the left leg would be an inch longer, then — abracadabra! — the RIGHT leg would be an inch longer. And then it would change again. Once, for several months, they were even, but it didn’t last. Now they are the same length again. No wonder I’m gimpy and walk with a cane!

It was a little discouraging, as I moved various parts of me in response to David Klein’s instructions, to keep hearing “restricted,” “restricted,” “restricted,” again and again, in reference to just about everything. But then, surprise! My right shoulder, which has been out of alignment since the beginning of my journey with chiropractic, is at last where it’s supposed to be. One of the original reasons for my setting out on this journey was to see if chiropractic could make enough difference in my arthritis-ruined shoulders that I could avoid having them replaced, as had been proposed by the surgeons. DK was pretty confident that he could restore an acceptable amount of range-of-motion, as well as reduce the pain to an acceptable level. I have to say, the shoulders still hurt a lot; but I can reach out to both sides, and I can reach up with both arms far enough to get the oatmeal box off the TOP SHELF. I can certainly live with that.  And now they are beginning to straighten out, as well.

So there’s a long way still to go; but the line on the graph connecting the dots between re-exams is creeping upward again, ever so slowly. I like “dramatic” better than “slowly,” but that probably isn’t a realistic expectation at this point. I will settle for any kind of upward I can get, with gratitude.

Thank you yet again, David, for your constant and dedicated attention to restoring this 72-year-old body to a level of functionality that will take some of those years away.

Onward and upward, then; and thanks for reading.  — Betsy