Category — 1

Wednesday, September 3rd — I had my sixth re-exam last week, but it wasn’t till today that I had the graph in hand so I could share it with you. (Hopefully, Dr. Klein will find a moment to insert it into this post… but he is crazy busy right now. Every moment that he isn’t cracking necks and leaning on backs (i.e. , waving his magic wand and performing miracles) he is on the phone making plans for a great and wonderful Event he’s planning in Del Mar in about three weeks.)

So back to my re-exam. Happily, two of the original Objective Findings from March 5th now appear normal: my left shoulder is no longer higher than the right, and I now can tip my head backwards to a normal degree (no more “limited cervical ROM extension”). Still can’t turn my head from side to side in either direction as far as I should be able to (”limited cervical ROM rotation” both left and right), but now I can nod with visible enthusiasm. That should come in really handy.

Unhappily, there were two NEW Objective Findings. I couldn’t believe what they were!

Last month, at the end of July, David found that for the first time, my hips were normally even and straight. Apparently, they had both been slightly twisted — the left one a little bit forward and the right one a little bit backward. That was also when he discovered that, once the hips were normally aligned, my left leg was about an inch shorter than the right one. Despite the orthopedic surgeons’ ultra-careful calibrations after my last hip revision, those measurements were based on slightly twisted hips. Alas!

And now, by some weird cosmic twist of humor, they were slightly twisted in the opposite direction: “ilium bone posterior left” (twisted backward) and “ilium bone anterior left” (twisted forward). But only a wee bit, just enough to make it so that my left leg is now only half an inch shorter than the right.

So two improvements plus two new problems, given the point value of each Objective Finding (which has changed slightly because there are now more Findings to fix), gives me a total of (sigh) an improvement over last month of only 1.4%. Drat! Crap! Damn! Yes, I said them all when I saw the graph, and thought others as well.

Okay: but the good thing is that the line on the graph didn’t go down, and it actually did creep up, even though it’s an infinitesimal difference. So maybe by the end of September I will be progressing visibly again. I sure will be working on it as hard as I can. Meanwhile, I can say that I have made 66.7% of the expected overall improvement. Only 33.3% to go!

Wish me luck. Thanks for reading — Betsy

Monday, August 25th — For about three years, or more, my left shoulder has been frozen. Well, at least I call it that: I’ve been able to raise the arm only just above shoulder level. Couldn’t put my hand on top of my head, although I could touch the back of my neck. Just frozen, it was; wouldn’t change no matter what exercises I tried to do. I was anticipating (based on an MRI taken of the shoulder in the fall of 1995, and the fact that the UCSD resident showing me the picture had commented, “Look, that’s where your shoulder joint used to be!”) having replacement surgery of that shoulder, probably in early 2009 when I’m finally off the cane. I was also anticipating having the right shoulder replaced, maybe a year or a year and a half later. It has been well on the way toward copying its counterpart, although the symptoms began about a year after the left one started to freeze. The right one is actually more painful, but the left one is more limited.

A question Dr. Klein asks every several weeks, usually when the monthly re-exam comes along, is: “If you could change just one thing, have the problems completely disappear in just one place, what would it be?” I used to try to fudge my answer: “No, I need three places — two shoulders and the right foot. I can’t choose among those!”  But I never got away with it.  So, forced to choose and grumbling all the way, I would choose the left shoulder, the one that is frozen, even though it doesn’t hurt quite as much as the right one does.

So, after declaring my spine “shockingly normal” ( see post of August 3rd), David Klein decided that henceforth he would give less attention to adjusting my spine, and more attention to working on the shoulders and the feet. In doing this, he has been using CAM (the little robot that’s like an infant jackhammer, slamming away at anything from 15 to 30 pounds of pressure) on both shoulders and both feet.  OWWWWW! is my only comment. I’m back to feeling as though I’d been hit by a truck… but in a good way, of course! Three times a week of this brief torture for a month, and — I appear to be melting!

Last week, as I was wiping down the walls of my shower in the morning (as I have done daily ever since we had the tile re-grouted three years ago), I suddenly realized that I was holding the towel in my LEFT hand. I was actually wiping the wall about seven feet up from the floor with my LEFT arm. That isn’t as amazing as it sounds, because I am six feet tall; but it was amazing enough, considering that up to then, I hadn’t been able to raise that arm that far. And I was doing it sort of unconsciously, because my mind’s on overdrive in the shower while I figure out what I’m going to do with my day, and what I intend to accomplish, and how the time will work around my chiropractic appointment and any other appointments I may have.

I did a little tiny hip-hop of joy when I found myself using that arm. Yeah, it hurt, but it always hurts, and it was actually moving. I couldn’t wait to tell DK I was melting. And he said, “Wow, freakin’ amazing! That’s blog material, if you ask me.”

So now you know, too. Just like the Wicked Witch of the North, I am MELTING. And I couldn’t be more pleased about it!

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Saturday, August 16th, almost 2:30 p.m. — Welcome to A Skeptic’s Journey with Chiropractic!

Here’s where you can play The Mermaid Game at 2:30 pm today. It’s pretty easy, at least, easier than most of the games I saw today:  all you have to do is look around on my blog and find the FIRST MERMAID POST. That is, find the first post I did with the word “MERMAID ” or “MERMAIDS” in the title (there are several, that’s the challenge). Once you’ve found it (you could always read it, but hey, that’s not necessarily in the rules) you need to take note of the date it was posted. Then you just leave a comment on THIS POST that includes that date.

I’ll be monitoring the comments at that point, and the 12th person who posts a comment before the game ends at 2:40 will win a neat little prize.  “Little” is the operative word there; this isn’t Jeopardy. I will then post the name of the winner here on my blog. If you see your name, and you’re at WordCamp, to claim your prize you need to find Dr. David Klein. If you’re at WordCamp only in spirit, not in body… I will have to find out how to handle that. If you’re a random reader, one of my few faithful, go ahead and play The Mermaid Game: you too can win a neat little prize. I’ll mail it to you if you win.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and playing The Mermaid Game!

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

Thursday, August 7th – So there I am, feeling rather smug about my Shockingly Normal Spine and all… and it’s 6:00 a.m., just getting light out. The cat has announced, as always, in no uncertain terms, that it is Breakfast Time, and I’m in the kitchen/family room, just coming back from opening the door to let in the lovely early-morning air, on my way to get the cat food and shut her up.

(I digress for a moment: a year ago, when I was bumbling around on a walker, we were Extremely Careful about things like throw rugs, and grab bars in the bathroom, and making sure there was enough space to get past furniture, etc. I guess we have gotten complacent, now that I’ve been on a cane for 11 months and am pretty much zipping about at normal speed, even though I’m gimpy as all get-out: think Igor in “Young Frankenstein,” or Lurch in “The Addams Family”.)

Anyhow, my beloved spouse had been sorting some of the gazillion papers he keeps in large volume-like files, and there are a couple of those files near the corner of the sofa… the passage is thus reduced to about 18 inches… and to make a long story short, my cane catches on the rocker of the rocking chair and I go staggering about eight feet to the kitchen wall.

Since we’re expecting plumbers at 9:00 a.m. to install new faucets in the kitchen, said kitchen wall is lined with cartons containing all the stuff from under the kitchen sink. And a bag of tennis balls, which I used to use on the legs of my walker. And several more, full of papers. And more. And more. So I bash my hand very hard against the wall to end the stagger, do a sort of half-spin in mid-fall, and wind up sitting on the carton full of papers. At least it ’s not the cleaning products, or the tennis balls!

The noise is stupendous enough to bring my beloved spouse flying from the bedroom, thinking that we’re being burglarized. (No self-respecting burglar would make anything like that amount of noise; but I appreciate the sentiment.) There I am, sitting on the box; my lower back hurts, my eyebrow-bone hurts (where did I bash that, I wonder?), my left leg hurts like anything below the knee… and I have no idea how to get up. Remember, the cartons are about 14 inches off the floor, and I am six feet tall, with knees that don’t bend very well.

And Amy, my poor old 28-year-old kitty, is all agitated because of the noise, and because Robert has come running, and mostly because no food has yet appeared on the counter — so she continues to yell at top volume.

Well, long-story-short here… it took me about twenty minutes to figure out how in hell to get myself up to a standing position. Robert wanted to pull me up by an arm, but the shoulders refused to entertain any such notion. I tried to push off from the boxes, but tennis balls are not great to push off from. Nor are cleaning products. Finally I had Robert sit in one of the bar chairs we have in the kitchen, with his back to me, and I took a deeeeeep breath… and on the exhale, I pulled myself up to the verticle by hauling on the back of the bar chairs. (Thank you, Kelli-my-physical-therapist, for teaching me that thing about exerting on the exhale.)

I felt as I suppose a surfer must feel when bashed about by a huge wave. Ouch, in other words, ouch almost everywhere.

I called Seaside Chiropractic, even though it was only 7:00 a.m. by now, and left a message saying I needed to arrange some extra time for my appointment today so Dr. Klein could check and see if anything was amiss. And then the plumbers came… and seemingly quite soon it was time to go see Dr. Klein.

Before he even examined me, he made me sign something that said he had advised me to have a x-ray before being adjusted, but I (O recalcitrant and uncooperative Betsy!) had refused, and said I wished to be adjusted without an x-ray. Hey, who wanted to wait another day while I tried to get an appointment with Radiology, etc.? Not I! I signed happily.

DK suggested there might be a compressed fracture of a lower vertebra, and explained that if that were the case, the only thing, really, that could be done was gradually to un-compress it, stretch it out again to its usual cylindrical shape, by gentle adjusting. However, his guess was that it was not a fracture, given that I was able to laugh AND talk to Emily at the same time that  my legs were going up and down on the lower part of the Moving Table. (Does he realize, I wonder, that I have been able to laugh and talk simultaneously while hippity-hopping around on a walker with a dislocated hip revision?)

A guess from David Klein is as good as an affadavit from anyone else, as far as I’m concerned. I have assumed that there is no fracture. I am assuming that my bruises will heal quickly, and that in a week or so I will feel back to Shockingly Normal again. Oh yeah… he did find two vertebrae out of alignment, one in the lower back and one under the shoulders… just where it hurt the most. They aren’t so painful today. I guess he just slipped them right back into place.

And what is the moral of this story? Jeez, the only one I can pull out of it is that I shouldn’t get all uppity just because I’m doing well.  I guess it’s back to being careful, and making sure the passageways are wider, and not walking too fast. RATS!

I still vow that by the end of 2008, I will be walking sans cane, and gimp-less. That is my Resolution.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Sunday, August 3rd — It’s been a while longer than I would have liked since my last post, but Life — in that funny way it has — just sort of intervened. I’ve had a weeklong visit from my Toronto sister and her husband, another few days of waiting-to-hear-what’s-going-on while my husband’s MDs hemmed and hawed after he had another cardiac episode (he is okay for now), and various house crises that all seemed to happen at once.  These included: need for new guest bathroom faucets INSTANTLY because of IMMINENT guest arrival, trip with husband (before sudden hospitalization) to select and order faucets and decision by husband to replace ALL faucet sets in ALL bathrooms AND kitchen at the same time, permanent demise of guest bathroom toilet seat during visit of sister (while husband was in hospital), trip to Home Depot to find new toilet seat and installation of same by brother-in-law, return of husband a day earlier than expected… and, of course, figuring out what to feed everybody twice a day in the midst of all this. Who had time to blog? Certainly not me!

But I really wanted to, because — I had my fifth re-exam with Dr. Klein last Wednesday. While I’m lying prone on the table, he’s checking my spine manually. He gets to the bottom, pauses, says “Hmmmmm…” in a pensive tone, then: “I think I’ll do that again.” Checks the spine again, and remarks, “Your spine is shockingly normal!” Then he checks the hips, and: “This is the very first time in — what is it, five months now? — that your hips have been straight and even!” And a minute later: “If we could just attach new shoulders and new feet to this normally straight spine — you’d be a whole new normal person!”

This is all good news, right? Finally, as he’s checking the legs, I hear: “Roseanna… Emily… come over here a minute.  Now, what do you notice?” And the ladies chorus, “Her left leg is an inch shorter than her right one!”

This is NOT good news. Apparently, even though the orthopedic surgeons were excruciatingly careful to  take measurements and make certain my legs were the same length the last time they did a hip revision, they were working from hips that were twisted to some degree. So when the hips were evened out by chiropractic manipulation, I wound up with one leg shorter than the other.

No wonder I limp when I walk without my cane — like Igor in Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein, I imagine. Or maybe Lurch in The Addams Family. One dratted leg is AN INCH SHORTER THAN THE OTHER.

Well, we’ll see what a few more months of chiropractic will do. Perhaps DK will be able to lengthen out the left one a bit. Perhaps I’ll have to buy an orthotic to build up that side. I refuse to walk this way for the rest of my life!

But the good news is that I have improved now by 62.4% since Day One. I can now perform several motions that I couldn’t manage in March. They are things like touching the top of my head with my left hand — silly little motions that you don’t even realize you have, until you don’t have them any more. I’m hoping Dr. K will be able to include my graph in this blog, because the upward slope of the whole thing thoroughly delights me! No leveling-out to be seen yet!

Onward and upward! Thanks for reading — Betsy

Wednesday, July 16th — I’ve been thinking about this on and off all day, even in between doing some editing for an online buyer and actually beginning another original article. This keeps getting in the way, so I’d better get it out of my head.

10) Whale vertebra in the front waiting room. At first I thought it was some oddly beautiful modern piece of sculpture, but when I asked Roseanna, last March, she said it was a whale vertebra that had washed up on one of La Jolla’s beaches. A patient had found it and brought it in to Dr. Klein. It’s huge, and strange, and gorgeous. I can only imagine what a whole chain of them would look like.

9) Snacks on the counter behind which is the front desk. Emily is the Snack Monitor, and she picks out wonderful things every day, from crisp and juicy organic green seedless grapes, to fake Cheetos from Whole Foods Market (maybe healthier than the originals?), to incredibly sinful little Trader Joe’s brownies. When you know something yummy is going to be waiting for you, it’s even another incentive to get yourself in there instead of dawdling around looking in the shop windows and reading the menus outside the restaurants.

VIII) Plastic spines all over the place. Like the whale vertebra, they sort of focus your mind on what this place is all about. Aside from the snacks, I mean. (Sorry about the Roman numeral — when I put an 8 next to a parenthesis, it kept turning into a Happy Face.)

7) Dan’s little landscapes in oil on the walls. I really love Dan’s work. As I said a while ago, I want to buy one of these little treasures someday when I have some $$$. He is really good.

6)  Patient education, more and more and more of it. I think DK’s plan is to have every patient be so knowledgeable about chiropractic, and how it all works, and why it all works, that all of us can answer questions and maybe even give little talks about it, should the occasion arise. Education and learning new stuff is what I love most of all, so I thrive on getting these little quizzes every day from Emily and Roseanna.

5) Framed testimonial letters on the walls, even in the bathroom. And a big book of them in addition, on the table in the waiting room. In 17 years of Dr. Klein’s practice, there are a whole heck of a lot of people who have been helped by, and hence “converted to,” chiropractic! It’s fun to read what people have to say about how much better their lives are since they got themselves adjusted.

4) Orchids all along the front counter. You see orchids everywhere here in Southern California; not necessarily outside in people’s gardens, although you do see that sometimes, but I guess everybody has a few in pots. I believe Seaside has somebody who takes them away when they’ve finished blooming and brings in a bunch of new ones. At any rate, they are always beautiful, and always different. I just wish they had some sort of fragrance; anything that gorgeous ought to smell good, too, I think.

3) Laughter and smiles and giggles everywhere in the office! These folks have so much fun in their daily work! Once upon a time, for twenty years, I was privileged to be able to work with children every single day in a Montessori school I founded with my sister. We used to refer to it (privately) as the GW — for Great Work. That was what it was for me, and for her too — the thing we loved doing above all else, and were really, really good at doing. The laughter at Seaside makes me realize that the staff here are also involved in a GW of their own, and are having as much fun doing it as I did with my own.

2)  Roseanna and Emily, singly and together. These are two beautiful, wonderful, smart, compassionate, caring, altogether excellent young women, whom I feel fortunate to have met. The two of them keep things running like a perfectly-balanced machine. Nothing fazes them, nothing seems to annoy them or bother them; they smile, and hug you, and welcome you in as if you were the best thing that’s happened yet in their day. I love them both exceedingly.

1) It’s gotta be Dr. David Klein! Think a combination of Mr. Clean and Gandalf the Grey: he looks kind of like Mr. Clean (no long gray hair or beard… hey, no hair at all!) but he functions kind of like Gandalf. He makes magical things happen for unbelievers. He knows EVERYTHING about the Internet, and is willing to teach you anything you want to know. He has some paintings by his mother hanging in the office (how neat is that??). He is incredibly funny, very wise in a huge variety of topics, and he is crazy about his beautiful wife. He’s half my age, and I think of him as sort of a guru. Go figure.

So those are my Top Ten Things I Love about Seaside Chiropractic. Now I can concentrate on work, now that I’ve gotten them off my chest.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Monday, July 14th – Today I had an appointment with my terrific Primary Care Physician at Scripps Clinic, Dr. Sanjeev Shah. And, just as with Dr. William Bugbee in June and Dr. H. Arthur Silverman in April, I was looking forward to seeing Dr. Shah with a certain amount of trepidation. I never know how MDs are going to react to hearing that I have been receiving chiropractic adjustments three or four times a week for more than four months now. Twice now I’ve been more than pleasantly surprised — I would say instead, I’ve been astonished — by the positive and encouraging attitude my doctors have shown. Since I previously had only my late OB/GYN father’s long-standing and negative opinion of chiropractic to go by, it has been nothing short of a revelation to see how open these MDs are to chiropractic, and to “alternative medicine” in general. Scripps Clinic actually has a Department of Alternative Medicine. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the University of California San Diego Medical School is now sending its Fellows seeking Board certification in Pain Management to Seaside Chiropractic, for a certain number of hours learning from Dr. David Klein how chiropractic can be efficacious in managing pain.

Dr.Sanjeev Shah commented on how good my blood pressure looked, and how great I  looked, having lost a fair bit of weight since I last saw him in February. He also mentioned that I seemed to be walking better than I had been. So then I told him the story of my Skeptic’s Journey with Chiropractic. I showed him how I can now move the right foot, that had been “like a block of wood attached to the leg,” to quote Dr. Klein; I showed him how I can wiggle the toes, which a few months ago just sat there, immobile, no matter what I did. (Still can’t quite pick up marbles with them, but that will happen soon.) I showed him how I can now reach both arms behind my back — also new in the last couple of months.   I told him how much better I feel, overall. I reported Dr. Bugbee’s remark about “keeping me out of the hands of the surgeons,” and awaited his comments.

Dr. Sanjeev Shah did not disappoint me. He said: “That’s quite a statement, coming from a surgeon! I would say, it’s obviously working for you — keep at it. And I’ll see you in six months!”

I told him I hoped to be walking without the cane at that appointment in January!

So three out of my three regular MDs have unequivocally given me the thumbs-up I guess I was hoping for!  Cheers to Dr. Sanjeev Shah and his two colleagues, who are to be congratulated for their open-mindedness to chiropractic in the face of the evidence:  ME!

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Friday, July 11th –  Yesterday I realized, rather suddenly, that my mermaid antics while struggling onto the segmented chiropractic table had changed. And rather significantly, too. Maybe you remember that back in May, there was a whole series of weird movements I had to go through to get myself face-down on that table… falling onto the table while the bottom leg-segment was slanted down, then dragging myself forward like a mermaid trying to get ashore, then having Emily raise the bottom of the table so it sort of slid me down the chute onto the table. There was much hilarity and Mermaid Mockery every time I attempted to climb aboard, so to speak.

But yesterday, there I was: kneeling (unbelievably!) on the heavily-cushioned table, then pulling myself into a prone position in a matter of seconds, not minutes. It had all happened gradually, without my even realizing anything had changed. Those artificial knees haven’t been able to bend farther than 90 degrees since 1998, when I got the second one! And I certainly have never been able to kneel on them.

How does all this change in my body take place, so subtly and gradually, day by day, without a signal of some kind? I don’t understand it. I can look back a week and not see much happening; but if I look back a month, or two months, I find extraordinary differences have become part of me, almost imperceptibly. All I can say is — WOW! and then, THANK YOU, DR. KLEIN!

So I guess that’s the end of the Mermaid.  I will rather miss her. But there will certainly be no dearth of laughter and affectionate mockery at Seaside Chiropractic, mermaid or no. Now it’s the blind-as-a-bat syndrome that has Dr. K, Emily, and Roseanna whooping at my expense. Here’s the story of that.

There’s a long-time patient at Seaside by the name of Dan, who paints incredibly beautiful small oil landscapes of La Jolla areas and puts them up in the office. I love Dan’s paintings: someday I want to buy one to put in our house, in some special little corner. They tend to have a lot of palm trees in them, and he does seascapes really well — you can almost hear and smell the waves splashing as they crest. As I say, I love Dan’s work.

So yesterday, I knew there was an electrician there at Seaside Chiropractic, who was puttering around the fuse box and talking to DK on and off; but I didn’t really pay much attention. I had most of my adjustment, with the accompanying snaps, creaks, and groans as usual. Then I sat up so Dr. K could use the robot (CAM) on my lower spine. We’re still hoping that one particularly intransigent vertebra will decide to move for us… it’s the only one that’s still sticking way out of place on the diagram that shows up on the laptop screen… and I’m up to having 30 pounds of pressure from the robot now.

And while I was sitting there, I happened to glance at the back wall of the room. There was a new painting by Dan — quite a departure for him, I thought, since it appeared to be an interior, with a couple of tall arches, and a big queen palm in the center. Then I remembered that UCSD Thornton Hospital (laughingly called Hotel Thornton by those who’ve been there, because it is so opulent and fancy) has a double row of mummified, or otherwise freeze-dried, queen palms down its marble-floored entrance area. Of course, I thought. Dan’s painted one of those palms at Thornton, and the arches that frame it just so… I’ll have to look at it more carefully after I’m through getting jackhammered by CAM.

So I made some offhand comment about how nice the new painting was, and how I hadn’t realized that Dan was getting into interior views.  I was more than surprised when David Klein burst into loud laughter, and said, “Let me get your glasses for you from your purse… now, take another look.”

Oh… my…god! It was the FUSE BOX, with the door open, and all the fuses nicely displayed at the top of a vertical fuse-holder-thing. Yes, it looked rather like double arches with a palm tree, but not much, not with my eyes able to see fifteen feet now. Oh, for goodness’ sake! I was more than embarrassed. Dr. Klein was still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, and telling me how he could hardly wait to tell Emily and Roseanna. “You’ll be hearing about this for months, I can promise you,” he assured me.

Yeah, I bet I will.

And I suppose he will tell Dan, too.

Oh well… just another inevitable feature of the famed Golden Years, I suppose: bat-blindness. I can still see that beautiful painting in my mind’s eye… the arches, with perfect perspective leading into the distance, to something I couldn’t quite make out… and the queen palm tree in the middle, with all its wonderful foliage. Maybe Dan will take a look at the Thornton Hospital entrance pavilion one of these days, and the painting I saw will be born…

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Friday, June 27th – Last week I had my fourth re-exam, the usual go-round of DK asking me to do certain movements, then telling Emily whether to write Normal or Restricted next to whatever it was on the report. Cheng Cheng, who does the graphing and other clever techy stuff, was away in New York all week. So I had to wait till a couple of days ago to get that graph I was so eagerly awaiting.

Maybe you remember that last time I was warned by Dr. Klein that “most of the easy stuff has been taken care of; now we’ll be working on what’s harder to get at, and you may not make such sharp progress from here on in. Your graph may level out in the next couple of months.” Not if I have anything to do with it , said I silently to myself. No leveling off allowed: only upward progress, even if not so quickly. I won’t have anything else.

And when I saw the graph, finally, just yesterday — woo-hoo! Another upward climb! I am up to 52% of the possible improvements from where I started on March 5th! If I could have jumped up and down, I would have. As it was, I just sort of wiggled vertically a little bit.

Thanks so much to David Klein for putting the graph into this blog, so you can see what I mean. I found it incredibly encouraging, especially since those ten days in Toronto without chiropractic or yoga made me feel as though I had been set back a bit. I was prepared for little, if any, improvement, I suppose. But maybe not, because I keep telling myself the story of how I am able to do this, and this, and the other thing, that I haven’t been able to manage for years. I keep telling myself the story of how I am just a tiny bit away from normal…

Actually, Dr Klein said my spine looks “almost normal” now, so I guess my body is listening to me telling myself that story.

When I got on the table, there were lots of good snaps and crackles all the way down; and when he “cracked my neck,” as the expression goes — WOW! Apparently the very top cervical vertebra, which had not moved at all in four months, was ready to dance with glee at my chart results. With my head turned to the right — SNAP! And with my head turned to the left — CRACK! Dr. Klein and I said at the same moment, “Wow! Did you hear that?”

I am in a mighty good mood, moving on toward Independence Day, even if I find myself sitting in front of my computer way too many hours a day. My beloved spouse is alive and kicking, I am getting towards Normal, my 28-year-old cat Amy has neither diabetes nor thyroid disease nor kidney disease, my 9-year-old cat Chloe is The Cat Who Walks By Herself, it has been a beautiful day… what more could I ask!

Thanks for reading — Betsy

And P.S. — I would so love it if you would leave a comment!