How Pedestrian January 28, 2008

It’s about a year since I signed on to my failed venture with Team in Training, and I’m a little nostalgic. I was a cruddy runner,
but it was a great sense of accomplishment to go from being barely able to crank out 2 miles in February to being barely able to crank out 12 miles in April.

Friday of last week was absolutely gorgeous, though, and I walked in to an afternoon appointment. It was a little further into town than I estimated, and I totally wore the wrong shoes … by the time I made it home on the the return trip, shin splints and some cleverly placed blisters had me nearly crippled. Even so, it was ridiculously invigorating and I think I might be onto something I can actually do on a somewhat regular basis. It’s not quite as rewarding as running, but then again, unlike running, walking doesn’t put me flat on my ailing back for weeks at a time.

As I walked the mile or so in, I realized that when I lived in Chicago, I walked all the time. Out here, in nature’s playground full of evergreens, healthy hikers, etc., no one walks. Or rather, folks only seem to walk at places they have to drive to get to.

As I traipsed along, I got the strangest stares — in Vancouver, Washington, you apparently only walk because you’re too crazy or too down and out to drive a car. An obviously middle class white chick walking along the city’s woefully inadequate sidewalks isn’t something drivers and vagrants in this town were expecting to see. (Nor were the jackasses rolling through crosswalks during my right-of-way expecting me to shout and smack their vehicles instead of politely letting them nearly run me over. You can take the girl out of Chicago, but….)

There’s a dusting of snow out there this morning and I’ve been working at home, finishing up some freelance work. Now I’m trying to decide if I’m up for walking in to town to go to my office and meet a lunch appointment. I’m thinking so, especially given the fact that everyone around here seems to forget how to drive when there’s any kind of weather at all.

In the meantime, I’ve got another review posted from last week, one from a month ago that I forgot to link to, and there’ll be another coming this week. Check out last month’s play review here and this week’s crazy dance preview here.

Loving the Bone Doctor January 11, 2008

In December, I started seeing a chiropractor. It was almost by force on Alexander’s part that I went–unlike most folks who would choose not to see a bone-cracker, it’s not because of any skepticism about their profession. In fact, I totally buy it–and acupuncture, naturopathy–you name a hippy-dippy treatment, and I’ll probably think, well why the hell not?

A has been trying to get me to go for months now. Since I threw out my back in April, the pain really hadn’t abated. It had localized, but the bastard spot where it now lived digging in its heels and setting up camp. I’d tried the model-boy chiropractor over the summer, but his creepy good looks and low level of charisma made me run away and never come back. After that, I sort of wrote off the chiro thing, did some useless physical therapy for a couple of weeks, and did a lot of wishing and hoping that I’d wake up one morning, magically able to walk without pain.

Then I went to my regular doctor, who said that the next step would have to be an MRI. Now, I am nearly always ready to give my lady doctor all the credit in the world–she’s the first general practitioner I’ve ever gone to who actually listened to what was up and tried to solve the problems presented. How sad that that’s a rarity.

But in this case, she prescribed the physical therapy and then said if it didn’t work, we’d need to do an MRI.

Now, there are 2 things wrong with that plan: 1) all an MRI would show was whether or not I’d need surgery, so afterward I’d either a) never have relief and be doomed to terminal pain or b) have to have surgery. And then of course problem 2) was, how the hell would I pay for an MRI?

Yes, my back hurt, and yes, I wanted to make that stop…but it just seemed like we were missing a step.

“Well, a band-aid didn’t take care of that cut…looks like we’re going to have to cut off your finger.”

“Um, isn’t there something else we could do to promote healing, first? Perhaps a cream or unguent that we could try?”

“Young lady, have you been to medical school? No? Then leave this to me. Now wait here while I go dust off the hacksaw.”

So I bailed on the MRI and decided I’d figure out something else. Then I got really busy with work, and over the couple of weeks surrounding Thanksgiving I hit the event horizon of my job and was working constantly, on my feet all the time, and generally not taking care of myself. So the back thing got out of control and I was nigh crippled by the end of the month of November.
Alexander apparently decided he did not want to end up caring for a woman crippled so ingloriously, and made an appointment for me with his chiropractor.

What the hell, I thought. I’d seen her before and although she reminds me a bit of a tool of a girl I used to work with, she was neither alarmingly attractive nor socially inept.

She also actually cracked some bones on our first visit, made a little bit of a difference here and there, and seemed to know what she was talking about.  So I went back a handful more times in the month of December, until she left for the holidays. By that time, we hadn’t gotten to zero pain but I *was* experiencing periods of time with no issues, and also issue-movement. What had started as a pinching bone ache has drifted into what now feels mostly like a sore lower back that needs proper care and time to heal.

So I can’t even begin to express how thrilled this makes me. I still have a few visits left with her before my insurance bails out, so I know I’ll go back…but at this point I’m kind of waiting it out to see where we really are.

So I can now say with experience that I recommend chiropractic care to those wary of its possible benefits. Not only does it help, but frankly it’s kind of cool to hear the cracks and suddenly feel a release of pressure. With a couple of exceptions it never hurt at all and, even if there were some sore moments when I got home afterward, They led to an improvement the next day.

So there you go. My little pro-chiro rant.

Carry on.