Getting Healthy in San Diego one bone at a time!

Sunday, June 7th — Well, I suppose everyone but me already knew this. But I still respect my Alma Mater enough to think that most of the professors and researchers at Harvard can be trusted to keep their hands clean as far as their work is concerned. Okay, okay, so a person of my advanced age ought not to be so naive, I can hear you all saying.

Here’s the thing: Three world-famous and well-respected Harvard child psychiatrists, who have been forerunners in popularizing the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs in children with bipolar disease, have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak. They failed to report or disclose large amounts of outside income from pharmaceutical companies and other entities that would constitute a conflict of interest, if their research were to remain objective and free of any hint of influence. These individuals were among the best-known researchers to be working on the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder in young people — and such diagnosis and treatment has soared in the past few years.  Billions of dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health and other organizations were involved.

You can read the article if this interests you at all. It’s from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?ex=1213502400&en=23737184f344c4ca&ei=5070&emc=eta1. So, does this scandal mean that their grants for future study are down the drain? Probably. Could it mean that a good percentage of the kids who have been on these extremely powerful drugs for years might not have needed them? Maybe. I am really saddened by this, and annoyed at myself for still thinking that just because researchers are supposedly working on behalf of children, they aren’t also taking kickbacks from Pharma.

The Ivory Tower of Academia isn’t, I guess, quite so far away from the nastiness of the everyday down-in-the-dirt world as it was in my day. Or maybe it wasn’t then, either, and I was just too gullible and trusting to know it. (That’s my beloved spouse’s view: “The trouble with you is, you like everybody!“  Oh, wow, that’s really a dreadful fault, I’ll have to work on that!)

I wonder how many of those kids with bipolar disorder might have been helped in some way by chiropractic, instead of by drugs that will knock your socks off and turn you into a sort of robot? Guess we’ll never know.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Sunday, June 8th – Sometimes I get so involved with my own life, and — especially where this blog is concerned — with my own personal experiences of chiropractic, that I completely forget there’s a whole world of opinions, pro and con, floating around in the air out there.

I belong to an e-mail listserve of freelance medical writers who are members of the American Medical Writers Assocation (AMWA). Mostly I’m a “lurker”: I just read what everyone else is saying about whatever. Once in a great while I stick in my two cents’ worth; but since I am doing very little medical writing right now, I don’t think what I have to say is terribly pertinent. However, imagine my surprise, and interest, a couple of days ago to discover that a thread was forming on Alternative Medicine. It all started with someone posting a link to an article called “Word Use and Semantics in Alternative Medicine: A Survey of Editors of Medical and Related Journals.” (The article is available on Medscape, in case you happen to be into semantics: here’s the link — http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/572553?src=mp&spon=17&uac=117226CY.)

I was amazed, as the responses started coming in thick and fast, that a lot of the comments had to do with chiropractic. They were not all positive. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will remember that I originally carried around my MD father’s prejudice against chiropractic as “a bunch of hooey.” I was startled to discover that some folks still feel that way. Hey, isn’t this the 21st century? Aren’t we all supposed to be open-minded and interested in discovering new knowledge in many fields? Isn’t the Internet supposed to be educating all of us in ways we never even imagined earlier?

Some of the more moderate comments of my medical-writer colleagues leaned toward the view that chiropractic doesn’t really work at all, and those who think they benefit from chiropractic adjustments are experiencing the “placebo effect.” (By the way, acupuncture came in for the same sort of criticism, for what it’s worth.) I was even moved to hop in and briefly tell my tale of conversion and success with chiropractic, heaven help me! Then the chiropractors and former chiropractors started popping out of the woodwork, standing up for what they do and their profession in general. It got very interesting, for me, at least.

It actually got rather hot. The anti-faction was throwing out accusations of all the dreadful conditions that could be caused by chiropractic adjustments. Finally, one guy, who is Senior Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Palmer College of Chiropractic, offered a number of recent references showing that studies indicate there is NO such connection, any more than there is with ordinary primary care allopathic medicine. I followed up on those, and found the abstracts pretty reasonable.

For example: from the abstract of an article in the February 15, 2008 issue of SPINE, by J. David Cassidy et al., titled “Risk of Vertebrobasilar Stroke and Chiropractic Care: Results of a Population-Based Case-Control and Case-Crossover Study” — just a few lines:

“Study Design. Population-based, case-control and case-crossover study.

“Objective. To investigate associations between chiropractic visits and vertebrobasilar artery (VBA) stroke and to contrast this with primary care physician (PCP) visits and VBA stroke.

“We found no evidence of excess risk of VBA stroke associated (with) chiropractic care compared to primary care.”

Someone among the freelancers eventually suggested that we’d gone as far as we could with this thread, and it was beginning to turn into one of those things where nobody is convincing anybody of anything. (Like many political discussions to which I have lately been privy…) I found myself a bit offended by the viewpoint that the reason acupuncture and chiropractic have such a success rate is the BELIEF FACTOR. I take that to be another way to describe the PLACEBO EFFECT, and it really annoys me.  I, if you will recall, started out with no belief at all in chiropractic, just a willingness to take a chance and try something that sounded plausible and interesting. The results I’ve seen in three months have convinced me that it’s worth continuing, since I wasn’t getting anywhere with conventional medicine except on the road to more joint replacement surgeries.

So I just thought I’d share this with anybody who’s reading the blog. I guess the air out there isn’t as clear as I was hoping it was. Okay, I’m not out to convince anyone else; I’ll just keep on keeping on, and reporting what happens with this particular 70-year-old body.  Thanks for reading — Betsy

Thursday, June 5th — On Tuesday, June 3rd, La Jolla’s own Seaside Chiropractic office was part of a truly historic moment in world medicine. There will no doubt be a press release about this event, but I want to add my own personal woo-hoo! and hooray! and It’s about time!

For the first time ever, and as far as we know, anywhere, medical Fellows are being required to obtain training in chiropractic as a condition of earning Board Certification in Pain Management. The School of Medicine at University of California San Diego (UCSD) has appointed Dr. David Klein to work with Fellows who aspire to Board Certification in Pain Management.  Dr. Mark Wallace, who runs the Pain Management Center at UCSD, has for several years routinely referred patients to Dr. Klein for chiropractic adjustment, to ease their symptoms of pain. Often the pain these patients were experiencing has been alleviated to a remarkable degree, or even completely eliminated, after Dr. Klein adjusted them. A testimonial letter from Dr. Wallace appears, in fact, on the Seaside Chiropractic website (http://www.bodyabcs.com/UCSD/SimpleDrWallace.html). The first Fellow to receive this on-site training from Dr. Klein spent the afternoon at Seaside Chiropractic on Tuesday afternoon! Dr. Klein will be demonstrating the use of chiropractic adjustment on various patients, as well as teaching these Fellows about how chiropractic works on the body, and how it can work in harmony with allopathic medicine to alleviate chronic pain in many instances.

I am absolutely thrilled about this development. I attended Dr. Wallace’s Pain Management Center for a time in the summer of 2007. He and his staff were very helpful to me in reducing the pain associated with discontinuing the large doses of opioids I had been taking for months, by prescription, to get me through three revisions of two hip replacements in a year. However, once I was off the Fentanyl, the “Pain Clinic” couldn’t offer me anything but more drugs to control my daily level of pain due to two pretty-much-disintegrated shoulders that were going to be replaced once I was able to walk without a cane. I can’t quite figure out why I didn’t get a recommendation to Dr. Klein at that point; maybe Dr. Wallace thought I was too old, or too far gone, to be a good candidate for chiropractic adjustment. I guess I’ll never know the answer. But I am delighted that his Fellows will now have some knowledge of what chiropractic can do to help people like me, and other sorts of folks who don’t want to be on huge doses of painkillers.

So three cheers for David Klein, his wonderful staff, and Seaside Chiropractic of La Jolla! I feel honored to have a connection with them all.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Tuesday, June 3rd — The long weekend in Toronto was fantastic! The birthday party was so much fun! My daughter-in-law had made me a scrapbook, with letters from loads of friends and family, and my sister had made an album titled, “Time Flies When You’re Having Fun!” containing pictures from times throughout my life and before, beginning with photos of my grandparents and parents in their youth, and ending with my wedding photo from January 1996. I looked around at the tables full of people I loved, and thought how incredibly fortunate I was to have THIS family, and THESE friends, and others who weren’t able to make the trip to Toronto. I am really blessed.

I should have realized, though, that every time you think you’ve got it made, every time you’re riding the crest, Life is going to come up behind you and kick you in the butt, just to remind you that You’re Not The Boss!  The butt-kick I received went like this.  We were supposed to fly home late Tuesday afternoon. Monday noon, while we were eating onion soup in Casey’s Grill and planning to see the new Narnia movie with the grandkids after school, Life snuck in and delivered the kick.

Robert was pontificating about something or other — I think it was about homeless people — and all of a sudden he grabbed the table with both hands, stopped in the middle of a word with his mouth open, and froze for about four seconds. Then he shook himself like a dog just out of the swimming pool, and announced, “I just converted.”  I thought that was pretty sudden for a religious experience, and sure enough, what he meant was not that he had Seen the Light.  Apparently, people who experience atrial fibrillation (wildly erratic heart rhythms) often reach a point where the heartbeat slows so much that they feel it has actually stopped beating. Then suddenly it kicks in again, and the rhythm is normal for a while. They refer to this as “conversion,” or — in Canada — “reversion.”  And that’s what had happened to my beloved spouse.

To make a long story short, he was admitted to an Emergency ward after having an EKG that was quite abnormal. He spent 34 hours in Emergency, then was taken to the cardiac intensive care unit for another couple of days. His heart rate was way low, and there was some talk of putting in a pacemaker immediately. That was replaced by readjusting his medications, and by Thursday afternoon he was stable enough for us to fly back to San Diego on Friday afternoon.

Yesterday, Monday, he had made an appointment with Dr. Klein. We both went along to Seaside Chiropractic, me for my usual fairly short adjustment, and him for (I hoped) his first actual adjustment by DK. After that, we were to visit his cardiologist and see what he wanted to do about the pacemaker idea. However, there were lots of people in the office, and DK was really busy; so the time went by, and went by, and my beloved spouse got edgier and edgier. I had my brief adjustment while Robert was meeting with Roseanna and learning what would be happening. We waited some more in the waiting room. All of a sudden Robert stood up and announced that he was leaving. And out he went. What I didn’t realize was that he was in pain again, having more of that arrhythmia that was so troublesome, and becoming more and more anxious as it went on. I was pretty embarrassed, and very annoyed that he would storm out without even seeing DK.  BUT… the plot thickens…

Forty minutes later, there he is, on the table in the cardiologist’s office, and the nurse is attaching electrodes for an EKG, when all of a sudden he goes into atrial fibrillation again.  The EKG needle is jumping all over the place, and the nurse is saying, “Hey! What the heck is going on here?”  She calls the doctor, who comes in and takes a look, and tells us, “Well, we’re going to have to squeeze you in for a pacemaker tomorrow afternoon!”

Now, as I write, I’ve just spoken to the cardiologist. Thanks to a big dose of Versed, my beloved spouse is stoutly claiming that he has had no surgery, and wondering when it’s going to happen, when in actuality he is in the recovery room, and all has gone well. The pacemakers they use these days are no longer the cigarette-pack-size I remember seeing once some years back. Now they are hardly bigger than a silver dollar, and contain, as the cardiologist told us, “more technology than the Hubble space station!”

It was the visit with Dr. Klein that wasn’t quite what I expected. I had thought DK would be able to work on Robert for some time, over weeks and months, maybe loosening free the nerves that are probably caught tightly in subluxations, and that first his neck pain and then his cardiac arrhythmia would slowly show improvement. And then I could say, “See? I TOLD you chiropractic was amazingly effective!”  And we would all smile happily and eat some cookies together. End of beautiful story.

How dopey was that, to expect it to work out the way it ought to have worked? How dopey was I, at my advanced age, even to entertain the thought?

How unfortunate, that now that beautiful story is probably not going to happen.  Well, it is what it is, as my yoga teacher says.

And my beloved spouse is more comfortable than he’s been in a long time, and that can only be a good thing.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Tuesday, May 20th – Okay, so that is another of my dad’s pithy sayings that has just popped into my head, vis-a-vis something that happened today. It’s sort of a translation of, “Well, I’ll be dad-gummed” or, “Well, I’ll be durned!”

At Seaside Chiropractic, they have patients play The Game. The Game is a process whereby Roseanna or Emily asks you a question about something you have learned about chiropractic, from their ongoing educational efforts. If you get the right answer, they sign off on your card. If you don’t get the right answer, they tell you the right answer, and then they sign off on your card. The card is a regular business-card size, divided into 20 sections; when the whole thing is filled with initials, it’s good for a single free visit.  OR, you can save up the cards till you have five, and use them for a month’s worth of adjustments.

So my first card was completed several days ago, and I suggested delicately to my beloved spouse that I would be willing to let him use my filled-up card to get a consult for himself. He sort of whiffled about it, “Okay, yeah, maybe, after we get back from the trip…” And I figured, okay, that was a wasted effort.

And then yesterday, without any warning at all, it’s “Hey, maybe I’ll just go along with you tomorrow when you go to see Dr. Klein. My neck’s been sort of bothering me…” I had to stop myself from woo-hooing right out loud! I then had to tell him that you don’t just “go along,” you have to make an appointment. Which I then did. While I was telling Emily on the phone that Robert actually WANTED to come in, and right away, too, I heard DK in the background saying, “No fricken’ WAY! That’s AMAZING!” I took that as a Yes.

Today, all the way to the office, I was like a mommy taking her kid off to school for the first time, anxious that he make a good impression on the teacher. I instructed Robert that he was not to act like an intellectual snob; he was to make an effort to smile from time to time (he’s sort of like the Great Stone Face by nature); he was under no circumstances to say anything rude; and a whole bunch of other admonitions that I’m embarrassed to remember. I was mortified when we got to the office and had to wait for a little while in the front waiting room (sudden influx of unexpected people just before we arrived) — didn’t he just take out his briefcase, extract the grant application he and his Science Guy&Gal cohorts are currently working on, and start writing! Oh, good grief! Now, is that bordering on intellectual snobbism, or am I overly sensitive here, or what? When David K came out briefly just to meet him, Robert actually made a joke. DK said, “So you’re a neurochemist, right?” And Robert replied,  “I’m working on cardiovascular, mostly… at home.” That was meant to indicate that he had CV problems. I was amazed, he joked!

Dr K spent a good long time with Robert, examining him and testing his ability to move in various ways. And before that, Roseanna also spent a good long time with him, getting a detailed medical history. In fact, including my own twelve-minute adjustment, we were there for a total of two hours!

Apparently DK believes that he can significantly reduce Robert’s pain in his neck, and also in an ankle that was injured some years ago and never quite healed right. And what do you know? As soon as we got home, he was on the phone again, making an appointment for Monday, June 1st, right after we get back from our week in Toronto. (My kids are throwing me a 70th birthday party next Sunday, on the Memorial Day weekend! The B-day was actually in January, but who in their right mind wants to drive in Toronto, in January??)

So I think… I think… that my beloved spouse is going to let DK work on him for a while and see if there is any improvement.  How can there not be? I look at what has happened with me in such a short time, and I’m still amazed. And overall, Robert is in better shape at 78 than I was at 70! I am so thrilled and happy that it went so easily. Now, I can’t wait to watch his progress.

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Wednesday, May 14th — This afternoon, as I was struggling to get prone on the moving table, I was wisecracking about feeling like a mermaid thrown up on shore. I stand at the foot of the table, make sure the head/cervical section is level, the thoracic section is also level,  and the bottom section is slightly tilted downward (and the whole business has to be raised a bit so it’s about knee height for me). Then I kind of sprawl and kind of crawl onto it. I am not able to kneel directly, since my fake knees don’t bend terribly well; although the thick and cushy surface of this table makes semi-kneeling less painful than most other surfaces, I must admit. And then there I am, sprawling and creeping upward, hauling myself up — like a mermaid on shore — up toward the top. It’s an exercise in itself just to get in the right position, and I’m usually panting when I get there.

So I’m making smart-ass remarks about mermaids, and Dr. K says, “You know, we ought to have a clip-on mermaid tail that we could put on kids when they come for adjustments. They might like it.” And I say something about “How about some appropriately mermaid-like music? You could have a CD to play while the kid’s being adjusted.” And then Emily starts singing “Under the Sea”, from “The Little Mermaid.” It takes me that long to realize they are mocking me and my sprawly, crawly personal arrangement efforts.  And there I am, whining, “Hey! Don’t MOCK me!”, just as I do when my kids are making fun of me. Have I come full circle, from Toronto to La Jolla, only to find MOCKERY at the end of the line again? Hmmmmm…

Then comes the Martial Arts part. Once, I can’t remember in what context, I told Emily and Dr. K that long ago, when I was taking T’ai Chi and loving it, I learned to break boards. (Hey, maybe that’s one reason my hands are bad now…) And this coming weekend, David is going to Las Vegas to meet with Randy Couture and his son Ryan (http://xtremecouture.wordpress.com/), and couldn’t be more excited if he were planning a weekend at the North Pole with Santa all to himself and freebies at the toy workshop. Randy is the five-tine champion of world martial arts, and some kind of guru to David K, as far as I can tell. So the next wisecrack from David, after we have pretty well exhausted the Mermaid theme, is — “Roseanna, maybe I should take Betsy to Vegas with me. She could probably take Randy right out with one swing!” (demonstrations of me knocking Randy out ensue..)

And all at the same time, the table’s bottom part is moving up and down (with my legs flapping like that ol’ mermaid tail), and David is pushing on bone after bone along my back, and I am groaning involuntarily.

I thought for just a moment how odd this was… and then I relaxed and smiled into the crispy toilet-paper face mat. These folks are my friends! Only people who love you tease you like this.  This is how my three grown kids tease me — “Let’s mock Mum some more, she is so MOCKABLE!”  I have been lucky enough not only to find a chiropractor who is helping me get my body back from the Undead, so to speak, but also to find three good friends with whom I can giggle and joke, and who I know will continue to mock me whenever possible.

I love it.

Thanks for reading — Betsy

Saturday, May 10th – My good friend Tom P. in Palo Alto asked me a great question tonight about my re-exam chart. He asked if the 37% I was (sort of) bragging about and (sort of) feeling sad about was based on how far I had come from zero. That is: when I first walked in the door at Seaside Chiropractic on March 5th, for my initial examination, did I have ZERO capabilities? Or did I have ANY things that were okay on my initial exam?

His point was that if I had any motions that were not restricted on the first exam, then I was moving up from somewhere north of zero… so I could be quite a bit farther along than I thought. Oh, I really wanted that to be the case! But now that I look at the chart again, all those extremely teeny little letters and numbers, it IS a zero in the lower left-hand corner of the chart. And I recall that the only thing I could do at “admittance”, that wasn’t deemed “restricted” by Dr. K when he told Roseanna what to write down, was that I was able to touch my chin to my chest.  AND THAT WAS ALL.  So I have, indeed, been pretty much starting from zero.  Sorry, Tom, it was a great idea, but… alas.  I will have to live with 37% for a while. There will be another re-exam after 12 more sessions, which should put me somewhere in June.  Hasta el proximo…

On Thursday last (as the Brits say), I had the pleasure of seeing a young 30something guy in the office being worked on by Dr. Klein. This guy has been going for chiropractic adjustments, off and on, since he was 12! I found it interesting to hear Dr. K say that he can feel the difference in joints that have been kept flexible since childhood, and joints that have just gone their own way, so to speak, and stuck together when they felt like it. I am pretty sure he said it better, but that’s how it seemed to me.

If I had known when I was younger what I know now… I think I would have found a chiropractor for my kids, not to mention myself. Now my babies range from 47 to 37, and have various degrees of aches and pains. Maybe some of them could have been avoided if they had had the benefit of chiropractic adjustments as children. There is an excellent college of chiropractic in Toronto, where they grew up. If I’d only taken the blinders off 40 years ago…

(But then there was my dad, not at that point only a voice in my head, saying, “Son of a gun! Look at that huge college of chiropractic! Can you beat that! You know, sweetheart, that stuff is such a bunch of hooey…”  Okay, so I shouldn’t be blaming Daddy for my ignorance. It’s my own fault I didn’t look into it before. Thank goodness for CraigsList and that ad from David Klein, looking for an assistant in February!)

Thanks again for reading — Betsy

Tuesday night, May 6th — I waited to write this till I got the chart of last Thursday’s re-exam. Okay, okay… I set an unrealistic goal for myself. I was so sure I’d be up to 50% of my possible improvement! Shot myself in the foot once more, just as I do so often. Why am I not learning my cosmic lesson any better, I wonder?

Anyhow: I WAS pleased that the chart shows me up to 37%. That’s not far off 40%… and that’s kind of close to 50%… (shut up, shut up, shut up , Betsy! Stop doing that!)

David Klein said yesterday that he was "shocked by the results," and I guess he meant that as a GOOD kind of shock. He was on about my foot a lot too — he said that at the beginning, when he called it "a block of wood at the end of your leg," he also noticed a sort of "unhealthy gray color." Doesn’t that sound enticing, though! Now, he says, the color is better, the edema is gone, and the bones inside are beginning to move. That all sounds pretty good to me. Maybe I really won’t have to go under the knife again!

Also, DK reminded me not to expect to keep improving to such a steep degree each four weeks. He thinks it’ll level off a little now, and was warning me not to get discouraged and give up. "We may have taken care of all the relatively easy problems," said he. "Now we’ll get into the more difficult adjustments, and those will take time to show up." Rats! I get a little taste of success, and in my usual Capricorn way (determined, hardworking, boring in the extreme because of that determination) I don’t WANT to level off. I want MORE! MORE! MORE!

Maybe I’m just crabby because there weren’t any goodies on the desk yesterday…

I think it’s getting easier to load myself onto the table face down. But not much. Good grief, yesterday I was flapping about like a mermaid trying to haul herself up onto the shore! (Nicer than a fish out of water, you see.) Once I’m arranged, it is easier to stay that way for a while, I do note that.

Well, tomorrow is another day (thank you, Scarlett O’Hara)! My shoulders were pretty damn sore all day today, and the upper arms too, but maybe that is because I’ve been doing a big editing/rewriting job and have been at the computer for hours on end. That can’t be too good for them. Another adjustment tomorrow… I can hardly wait.

Thanks for reading,

Betsy

Friday, May 2nd — When my oldest son Danny and his wife Jackie were first married, Dan celebrated every “monthiversary” by bringing Jackie a rose for each month of their marriage.  One rose in September, two roses in October, three roses in November… you get the picture. It went on for a couple of years, till it got too expensive (and they’ve been married now for nearly 18 years!), and I always thought it was such a neat thing to do.  The concept of “monthiversary” has stuck in my mind ever since.

Well, on Monday I will be celebrating two months as a patient at Seaside Chiropractic! It’s my two-rose monthiversary! I find it incredible that it’s only been two months.  It seems as if I’ve known David Klein, Roseanna, and Emily for years. Their encouragement and enthusiasm has been so supportive, as my “antique frame” (my mother’s expression) has begun to be more flexible, and even — dare I say it? — has begun to approach the norm.  At least, my spine is much closer to the normal curve, according to CAM and Dr. Klein.

I had my second re-test on Thursday. I can hardly wait for my Monday appointment, when I’ll find out exactly how much I have regained since March 25th.

That said, I should in all honesty say that I am not pain-free yet, by any means. By the time I get to Seaside’s office at around 1 p.m., I can usually assign a 2 to each of my areas that’s under reconstruction, so to speak.  That would be both shoulders, the hands, and the right foot.  But when I get up at around 6:30 a.m., it would still be more like a 4.  I shuffle to the bathroom and pop a Norco and a Celebrex; then, by the time I’ve finished feeding the cats and making the coffee, and the oatmeal’s on the stove, I’m getting back closer to 2 again.

I am celebrating on Monday, my two-rose day.  The fact that I can make the contrast between a pain level of 4 and a pain level of 2, all within a couple of hours, astonishes me. The fact that I can turn my upper body to either side, sufficiently that someone standing in front of me can see the back of the shoulder, ASTONISHES me. The fact that I look forward all weekend to the next time I get adjusted, with all the accompanying discomfort of the moving table and all the rest of it, also astonishes me. 

When I started this blog in early March, I had no idea that only two months later I would have come so far. There are still a lot of monthiversaries to celebrate before I’m done, but this one is making me happy already.

It’ll be a two-rose day for sure!  Thanks for reading — Betsy

PS — Oh dear, something very sad I should mention.  I seem at some point to have hit the wrong combination of buttons while I was trying to manage my comments, and like magic, every one of the comments on my blogs has vanished! Some were really nice, too: there were some good ones from Dr. Klein, one from each of my sisters, one from my granddaughter, and several from Seaside Emily, my favorite Southern belle.  I am so sorry! So, apologies to those people who were kind enough to visit and to leave a comment. Come back again and say something else, and I promise I will be less quick with the trigger finger in future.  My bad!

Monday, April 28th — Those Rice Krispies guys have nothing on me! This was my third day on the moving table. It takes me several minutes to get arranged into the prone position; Dr. Klein has time to adjust somebody else while I’m getting there. I flop around like a fish out of water trying to lie on my face, then when I finally achieve it, I heave a huge sigh of relief. After DK messes with my back for a bit, he says, “Now flip over on your back.”  Still can’t flip.  It’s always another flop.  But I get there eventually, and then he works on the shoulders, feet, and arms/hands/fingers.

But I digress… back to the sound effects.  I could hear the snaps, crackles, and pops as he leaned on my shoulders and various parts of my back.  I guess he could hear them too, because he kept saying, “Beautiful!  Oh, that was a good one!  Lovely!”  When he was done, while I was flopping over, he said he’d gotten more cracks out of me today than ever before.

Dr. Klein is using CAM now just on the lumbar and sacral regions, as I believe I said before. Even CAM was on my side today.  There were three or four vertebrae that were clearly out of alignment on the diagram, and after getting pounded with 25 pounds of pressure, all of them were observably better aligned. I asked if I could assume that the upper parts of my spine were normalized now that they were no longer showing up on the diagram. Dr. K said no, I could not assume that; it just means that he is now adjusting those areas manually instead of with the robot.  Oh well… it was worth a try.

I’m looking forward to my second re-test on Thursday afternoon!   These re-tests are administered about every 12 or 13 sessions, to see how much progress has been made in regaining function.  Last time I had regained 26% of the expected total! I would just love it if I scored another 25% this time, but I suppose that’s unrealistic.  I’ll be happy with anything that shows some progress.

I’ll report again on Thursday. Thanks for reading — Betsy