Category — chiropractic

Tuesday, March 25th –  Well, I apparently got it a bit wrong. The musical sound actually emanated from the robot, but was triggered by the resonating frequency of the bone.

I believe I would still rather think of it as “singing bones.”  I love the thought of that.

But the best thing is, the sound is perceptible to someone OUTSIDE my body. Dr. Klein could hear it perfectly well.  That is so neat!

When I got home after my adjustment today, I was feeling pretty stretchy and limber… not a usual feeling for me. And I suddenly thought:  “I have to fill out a form each time I go to see Dr. Klein, with a drawing of a human figure. I shade in the places where I feel pain, and assign each place a number on the pain scale from 1 to 10. When I started seeing him just under a month ago, I was giving each area a 4 or a5; and the past week, I’ve been giving every area a 3.  But hey, I can hardly believe it — if I had to fill out that form right now, I’d put a 2 on every single pain area!”

This may not seem very significant to you, but to me, it’s almost miraculous. I haven’t been down to 2 for at least three years. I mentioned at the beginning of this blog that in the past two and a half years I’ve had three revisions of earlier bilateral total hip replacements. The second one turned out to require rebuilding of the whole left side of the pelvic bone with a special porous metal, into which new bone would grow and fuse. This was due to the fact that the polymer coating on the original implant had eaten away a big hole in the bone, which had to be cleared of necrotic tissue and then covered with metal plates so there would be something that could hold the screws of the new implant.  (No wonder I was having a lot, A LOT, of pain!)

That revision dislocated within ten days, but I didn’t realize it (and neither did anyone at the rehab facility) because I was on such a high level of opiates for pain management. The surgery had to be redone two months later. My surgeon said the pelvic bone couldn’t be rebuilt a third time. If this went wrong for any reason, I would be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. I spent a total of four months in a skilled nursing facility, with two months of placing no weight on the operated side. The only time I could get out of bed was to lurch to the bathroom on my walker: hop with all my weight on the right foot, then a tippy-toe touchdown on the left, just for a second. The rest of the time I spent with physical therapy and learning to walk again. When I came home from rehab in March 2007, I then had the task of coming off a strong dependency on Fentanyl — not at all fun, in fact, pretty awful. I was on the walker through August 2007, in fact, and have been walking with a cane ever since. On good days my pain level was 3; on many days it was 5.  I thought it would be that way permanently, and so I learned to live with it and got on with my life.

I don’t suppose it is realistic to expect that 2 will be repeated every day from now on. But I do, now, have a reasonable hope that my regular adjustments will really get rid of my pain eventually. I cannot thank David Klein enough! It’s so exciting to see how quickly I’m making progress under his care. In addition, his wonderful staff — Roseanna and Emily and Cheng Cheng — are so supportive and cheerful, so happy to witness my improvement:  I love coming to this office. (Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to mention that there is always a basket of chocolate-covered peppermint patties on the front desk, and a daily plateful of some kind of sinful cookie or little pastry.  No wonder my diet has ground to a halt…)

Chiropractic is a journey I never thought I’d be making, and I am inexpressibly grateful to all the folks at Seaside Chiropractic.

Monday, March 24th — I have to write about the amazing thing that happened to me today.  Dr. Klein was working on my right shoulder with CAM. He was standing behind me, CAM pounding on my shoulder and Dr. Klein’s hand pushing on the front of it. I heard what sounded like a musical chord, very far off.  I asked if he had his cell phone in his pocket, and he said, “No, why?”

ME:    Because I hear music. I thought it was your phone.

HIM:  Nope.  Here, do you still hear it? (doing the same thing to my shoulder)

ME:    Yeah, it’s like a chord.  What is it?

HIM:  Do you know anything about harmonic resonance?

ME:   Not really, why?

HIM:  (with a big grin) There was a resonance between the harmonic frequency of the bone in your shoulder and the harmonic frequency of the robot, and when that happens, there is a sound.  I see this about once a month or so.

ME:   You mean — my body was SINGING??

HIM:  Well, I guess you could say that.

ME:   Wow… oh, wow…

Isn’t that astonishing?  I Googled “harmonic resonance” when I got home, and it’s all very complicated and mathematical, with diagrams and all.  What I found mostly dealt with musical instruments and closed tubes; but essentially, in Language for Dummies, it’s just what he said.  I just love that! And when he worked on my left shoulder, I didn’t hear a thing.  Astonishing.

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.

Wednesday, March 19th — Today, after Dr. Klein used the robot on my feet, I noticed little indentations in the skin and underlying flesh. I commented on the edema, wondering if it would go away eventually. He gave me a brief mini-lecture on how fluids like blood travel through the body, via the circulatory system — a closed system with the heart as the central pump. In other words, blood is pumped to all parts of the body by means of the arteries, and returns to the heart through the veins. Lymph is a clear fluid that is squeezed from blood plasma — basically, it’s blood that has no red cells.  The lymphatic system is a one-way system rather than a circulatory system. Lymph collects in many little sacs throughout the body, often near the joints, and drains out through little one-way valves.  That’s what is causing the edema in my feet — an over-collection of lymph, made worse by gravity. (This is massively oversimplified, by the way. If you’re interested in more about lymph and the lymphatic system, go to Google.  It’ll give you several websites of varying complexity that will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about lymph.)

Dr. Klein suggested that my physical therapist might perform a lymphatic massage to help drain the excess lymph out of my feet.  It’s a simple massage using a “milking” movement of the hands, from the feet back toward the legs.  If my artificial hips permitted me to reach my feet, which they do not, I could easily do it myself.  Maybe I could do it by doing my regular PT leg-lifts, then bending the knees back.  I’ll try that and report back to Dr. Klein.

He has worked on my shoulders with the robot three times now, and that feels very good too. I notice that I’m able to tolerate higher levels of pressure from the robot than I was at the beginning. At first, it was 10 pounds of pressure at the neck, and 15 pounds at shoulder level. Farther down the back, where the vertebrae are larger, he used 20 pounds.  Now Dr. Klein starts at 15 pounds on the neck, moves to 20 around the shoulders, and 25 lower down the back. Nothing has ever been painful! The worst it’s been during an adjustment, I would say, is the feeling that my teeth are chattering when he starts on the neck. I guess this must be how the pavement feels when the workmen start jackhammering! And even that isn’t really very bad at all. I do feel pretty stiff and sore the next morning, briefly; but then, it’s hard to tell how much of that pain is caused by the adjustments and how much is just the regular garden-variety stiffness and soreness I’ve been living with for years.

Thursday, March 13th — I asked Roseanna today whether Dr. Klein has many older patients. Most of the folks I see in the office seem to be in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. I was really surprised when she said there are only a few “geezers” like myself. (That’s my word, not Roseanna’s, by the way.) It seems there may be a couple of reasons for this. 

One: it’s possible that many older people still have that negative perception of chiropractors and what they do. I still hear my dad’s voice in my head, every time I park my car in front of the office — Remember, sweetheart, this stuff is a lotta hooey! — and I hear myself saying apologetically, “Sorry, Daddy, but I love it, and it’s working for me.” 

Two: apparently older patients often get discouraged because results are slow in coming, and then they quit. I am looking at ONE FULL YEAR of visits — three times a week for six months, and then once a week for six months. I WILL NEVER QUIT! I will do just about anything that needs to be done to avoid having further surgeries (for example, the shoulder replacements). Dr. Klein is very clear about this one-year expectation, and it’s fine with me. I am looking forward so much to the reduction of pain and the improvement in body alignment that I believe will take place as a result of frequent and regular adjustments over time! It’s worth everything to me to get my life back.

Tuesday, March 11th — In the fourth adjustment, today, in addition to using the little robot on my spine, Dr. Klein worked for a few minutes with it on the foot that I’ve been told would ultimately require fusion to get rid of the pain. The process actually felt great, like a very good and deep massage. I walked out feeling that we were really beginning to make progress.

I stopped at the bank, stopped at the post office, drove into my garage at about 3:15… just laid my head back for a second on the back of the seat… and woke up half an hour later! I staggered into the house, found my cat curled up among the pillows on my bed, and crawled under the comforter with her. I didn’t open my eyes until after 6:00 pm. Those two and a half hours were the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time! That was certainly an unexpected short-term result of the treatment.

I find myself really excited to see how this plays out over time.

Monday, March 10, 2008 –  I have to begin this blog with a bit of a retrospective, so you’ll understand how extremely unlikely it is that I find myself planning to sign an agreement for a year of treatment by Dr. David Klein of Seaside Chiropractic.

I grew up in Massachusetts: a kid during the 40s, a teenager i the 50s. My dad was an obstetrician.  At that time, the medical profession took a pretty dim view of chiropractic. I don’t know how many times I heard him say, “They’re all a bunch of quacks, sweetheart!” or “They call it chiropractic medicine, but it’s all a bunch of hooey!”  I didn’t even realize I was carrying my father’s prejudice into my own adulthood. Occasionally a friend would remark that she had had a chiropractic “adjustment” and felt a lot better, from whatever had been ailing her. I would smile a mysterious Mona-Lisa-like smile and think, “Boy, you’ll never catch me letting somebody mess with my spine! It’s all a bunch of hooey.”

To add to this one-sided viewpoint, in 1996 I married a research neurochemist and moved to the San Diego area. My husband is a Science Guy who has spent a lifetime working in labs, devising the experiments that lead to development of drugs for various conditions. His first plan of attack in any illness, injury, or ailment is MEDICATION. He is very unenthusiastic about alternative medicine in any of its forms. Although I have nothing against medication, and I do take a lot of prescriptions for my various conditions, I have always been interested in alternative medicine. Nevertheless, I remained definitely skeptical about chiropractic, although I really knew nothing about it — except that it was a bunch of hooey, you know.

So how did I get to this point? Well, I answered a job ad in CraigsList in February, for a part-time administrative assistant to a doctor. The office is located in La Jolla, only about 20 minutes’ drive for me. I had no idea what a huge change was on the way.

I received an e-mail invitation to a group interview, and a request to look over the doctor’s website (www.bodyabcs.com) and read the cartoon books there. What impressed me most about the website — apart from the wealth of information about chiropractic in general, and Seaside Chiropractic in particular — was the large number of testimonial letters from patients. One in particular caught my eye, from the doctor who heads the UCSD Pain Management Clinic, which I had briefly attended last summer.  This doctor has been referring patients to Dr. Klein for years, for pain management. In addition, he and his family are patients of Dr. Klein’s. That was good enough for me!

After the group interview, Dr. Klein offered all the applicants the opportunity of a free consult, just to show each of us what he does. I took advantage of the invitation the very next day.

The diagnostic “robot” (I encourage you to read about it on the website, it’s fascinating) revealed that many of my vertebrae were “stuck” and unmoving. This was not surprising. I turned 70 in January, and over the past 12 years I’ve had two total hip replacements, three hip revisions, and two total knee replacements.  My orthopedic surgeon has said I have the worst case of osteoarthritis he’s ever seen. I’ve been expecting to have both shoulders replaced and my right foot fused sometime in the next two to three years. When I’m asked about my 1-to10 pain level, I usually say, “I pretty much live at 4-to-5.” It’s bearable, I’ve learned to deal with it, I walk with a cane and I get on with my life — but I am always hurting to some degree, and often quite a lot. I take pretty strong painkillers, several every day. They help a lot with the symptoms, but they do nothing for the underlying causes of the pain.

A couple of weeks later, I got an appointment at Seaside Chiropractic. The first half hour or so was devoted to education about how chiropractic works, performed by Dr. Klein’s delightful assistant, Roseanna.  The information was a parallel to what’s in one of the cartoon books on the website, “What You Need To Know,” and I had read that. Still, I was impressed with the emphasis on educating the patient about what chiropractic is, and what will be happening during adjustments. There was definitely plenty of opportunity to voice any questions, concerns, or fears the patient might have about the process or its results. Roseanna also took a very complete medical history, asking about all falls and injuries I had had during my entire life! Amazing, how those memories come back when you search for them…

Dr. Klein then had me lie face-down on a special table while he checked my vertebrae manually. Actually, this was quite a trick for me — it was the first time in probably a decade that I had succeeded in lying prone.  But Dr. Klein asked me if I was “down with this,” and I was.  Next were some tests to see how I moved, what my range of motion in different areas was, how flexible or inflexible different joints were.

And finally, Dr. Klein performed my first chiropractic adjustment. After reading all the testimonials on the website, I was a tiny bit disappointed not to have a major spiritual experience, or an amazing increase in olfactory or auditory sensation. Just a little more ease in turning my neck from side to side, maybe fewer crackling noises inside as I moved… that was all I felt. But I’m in this for the long haul. If it took me seven decades to get “stuck” to this degree, I don’t expect it all to come loose in one hour’s treatment. The next morning I felt as though I’d been run over by a truck. EVERYTHING ached. By noon, however, all was as usual in the pain department.

Although I didn’t get the job in the office, I’m sure that answering that ad was a life-changing decision for me. I would otherwise never have come to Seaside Chiropractic, and wouldn’t have realized that there might be another way than surgery and heavy medication to reduce my pain.

It’s never too late to learn and experience something new!

tune in later today!