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.

I Hope We get home in time to watch another episode December 31, 2007

I’m stalling on getting ready for a NYE party that I’m not that excited about going to, except it cost a ridiculous amount of $ and I scored us free tickets (thanks, M). On a work/politics/civic involvement level, it’s good for us to go. But we’ve just discovered Arrested Development (the show, not the group), and are interrupting a marathon viewing session to change out of sweatpants and lurch out of the house.

They’re supposed to have a “beef carving station,” and Alexander is trying to figure out what to wear that will allow him to bring home $125 per person’s worth of beef.

I’m glad it’s cold outside. Hopefully it’ll stall the scent and I won’t have to witness A’s untimely (but appropriate) death, being mauled for his role as the Pied Piper of Beefington.

I keep saying I’ll post more often and then I don’t, so I know this holds little water. But my job’s least busy point conveniently intersects with the New Year–so whereas I scorn “resolution” thinking, I am starting the Year of the Rat with big plans indeed.

One of which is to force myself to write more regularly. And to get back in shape, as I’ve been ballooning ever since April’s back injury. Soooooo, I’ll have plenty of Sisyphean efforts to write about…and since I’ve decided that blogging counts as writing, I imagine I’ll be doing it a fair bit, to distract myself from doing anything more productive. Or strenuous.

I have so much to tell you! We bought a house in October. I survived another tree fiesta. I started seeing a chiropractor who doesn’t terrify me and might actually be doing some good. I purchased a membership at a yoga studio at which I have yet to attend one class, since my intro session.

I’ve reviewed a couple more shows since I last posted. Links to those are here and here.

Alexander needs my help lining his pockets with plastic wrap, so I must go. But I’ll be in touch.
Happy New Year to all, and to all a Good Rat.

Remember Me? November 29, 2007

So it’s been a while.

I have a job that hits its peak activity in the month of November, working to bring Christmas joy to the general Clark County Washington area. While my rosy cheeks, jolly demeanor and pleasantly plump exterior might lend the impression that I am Santa Claus, I am in fact just one of his minions.

I am, in words and substance, an event planner. And my event crescendoed in October and November and is now slipping sweetly into memory-land….

Which means I’m back.

I’m easing myself back into the real world, but expect i’ll be able to post more frequently…especially as I try to revisit health and fitness.

Although my back is still a huge tormentor in my life and I nearly threw it out again this weekend at work (that was a fun moment…surpassed only by the moments right after when I had to pretend nothing was wrong) , I am fully intending to get back on the fitness train in December, and to have many grumpy things to say about it.

In the meantime, I’m still reviewing. Here’s the latest, for a stinker that sticks so stinkily you might get residually stinky just by reading this.

More reviews and such September 12, 2007

Here’s a review of Steve Almond’s rad new book, (Not that You Asked). It just posted and will be in on the streets tomorrow.

Here’s my stuff on the T:BA festival so far.

Charlotte Vanden Eynde: Map Me
tEEth: Normal and Happy
Sarah Shapiro, The Gay Deceivers, and Pash(ly)
Interview with Zoe Scofield
Ryan Wilson Paulsen: I’m Searching Too

More of My Opinion… September 10, 2007

So when it rains it pours…I’m jacking my schedule up into the busy part of my year, at the same time as I’m up to my eyeballs in paid writing gigs. Which is absolutely awesome, but it means any chances of me writing about my continued misadventures in getting in shape are being thwarted by all these people who are actually paying me for my opinion.

Here in Portland, in what passes for the art world, the contemporary art museum (PICA) does an annual “Time-Based Art” festival (TBA) which is alternately cool, mind-bending and just plain strange. This year, the Mercury is doing a blog of the event, to keep pace with the daily performances. I’m working on it and just saw my first show last night. Since it’s a blog, the subjects may change by the time you get to it. But for now, here’s the incredibly Belgian show I saw last night: Map Me.

More Reviews August 23, 2007

Yes, I’m crap for posting lately. I’m working like crazy, ducking a crazy insurance lady, trying to get my back healed so I don’t have to get an MRI, and planning on doing a 25-mile ride Sunday (a short part of the Portland Century). I hope, soon, to have something to say.

In the meantime, I’ve got plenty to say about the state of the arts. Here are links to 2 reviews that just came out today:

Book: Shorts Are Wrong by Mike Topp

Play: Crappy Portland Improv

On Being a Dropout August 11, 2007

So you may have noticed (or not) that I’ve studiously avoided the question of whether or not I continued with the bike race. I was on the fence for a while, but I eventually decided it wasn’t going to happen. Or, if it did, that I wasn’t going to enjoy it.

Dropping out isn’t something that I take lightly. Not only am I generally driven to completion and success, but I’ve also got juuuuuuuust enough OCD to make me incredibly uncomfortable with leaving things undone.

That said, over the last few years I’ve been working on cultivating a bit more of an “if you love it, set it free” approach.

Meaning, if I don’t finish it and it never gets done, maybe it’s for the best. Or if I leave it for a bit and end up coming back to it in one way or another, then we’ll all be better for the time off and redirected approach.

By “we all,” I include four-fingered hand-knit gloves, half-written novels, grad school, and bike races, of course.

Finishing something just for the sake of finishing it it pretty ridiculous, and a little too big-corporate for where my head is going these days. If there’s no joy in the process, then the product has profoundly less value.

To take this out of the editorial section of Philosophy for Dummies and bring it around to reality, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying the bike rides. I mean, I WAS enjoying the bike rides, I just wasn’t enjoying everything that went along with them. The long hours of practice, the rides that were about distance, not the experience, and the feeling that I was somehow “less” if I didn’t have a bike that I could quote the stats on, or if I didn’t have a bike computer that could tell me specific miles traveled, or I wasn’t wearing the right amount and kind of Lycra… The people on the bike team were (and are!) incredibly nice, good people. But they wanted something different than I did, and it took me a while to figure that out.

And thus, the 2007 century ride became yet something else I’ve dropped out of.

I’m still riding my bike, and trying to go new distances and give myself new challenges. But I want my rides to be about the rides themselves–seeing new scenery, feeling the wind across my shoulders, zipping over hills and slowing down as I feel like it.

Tomorrow is the Bridge Pedal, a yearly event where they close all of Portland’s bridges to traffic for a few hours and you get to bike over them. It’s incredibly cool to ride over these monsters that you’re usually traversing at 55 mph or more and actually SEE things. Last year, we rode 8 of the 10 bridges. This year, we’ll probably do the same, though I’m gunning for the full, 10-bridge ride.

But either way, we’re going to ride at the pace that works for us, and stop and look out over the bridges from time to time, and it’s going to be a blast. THAT’s the kind of bike riding I want to be doing these days. Not some crazy Bataan Death Bike that has me cursing everything around me.

So that’s what I’m doing, damn it.

And I feel so much better for it, I know it’s the right choice.

Pulmonary Pugilist August 4, 2007

I tend to pay attention to my health in spurts.

I’ll ignore it for a very long time and then something will get me into the doctor’s office and I’ll realize, “Well my goodness. Maybe I should I mention these other chronic issues I’ve been sublimating, what with me being here and all, and having already paid my insurance company’s outrageous co-pay.”

So I’ve been working through my back issue, and because I just looooooooove having people in white coats and/or cool-spectrum scrubs poke and prod around in my personal space, I also brought up to my doctor that I’ve had some shortness of breath issues.

Many posts ago, I mentioned that I heart my doctor (the first time I’ve liked a doctor since Dr. Elmer Groff, RIP, my childhood family practitioner) because she actually listens to her patients and tries to solve their issues. I never realized that this would be a trait you’d actually have to seek out in a physician, but apparently it doesn’t just come with the stethoscope.

This difficulty breathing thing (just feels like my lungs can’t quite fill up, and it makes people around me think I sigh loudly just to get attention) has been an intermittent issue for a couple of years now, and previous doctors have listened to my chest, patted me on the back and said it’s probably just tension.

I would then be grateful that, while they didn’t help me solve my problem, they also didn’t tell me I seemed “hysterical” and try to remove my uterus.

Dr. Pam, however, said it might be mild asthma and we should do some tests to be sure. Yes, she may just have a buddy in the lab who she wants to see get paid a little more…but it could actually be that she is trying to do her job. A novel concept in today’s world of medical fast food.

I did a little reading online, and remembered some stuff I’d found the last time I had this issue…I’ve got mild adult-onset allergies….never been allergic to anything in my life, until I hit my thirties and suddenly was allergic to grass, dust, feathers…basically all the things you see peppering the landscape in a Claritin commercial. Folks who have this issue are also more likely to develop asthma.

Rockin’.

So. On Friday morning I went out to the west suburbs of Portland during morning rush hour, to take a pulmonary function test. I was ushered into a small room by my technician Randy, who struck me as a bit of a cross between the dad from Empty Nest (age and eyebrows) and Steve Zahn (voice). Randy explained to me that I’d be taking all of these tests (which would last an hour) from inside the plastic box that sat across the room.

I’m pretty sure Houdini used to practice in boxes like this.

But they’d adapted it for medical use, with tubes and hoses, valves and barometers sticking out of it. And in the center, a small wooden chair.

The tests all involved me wrapping my mouth around a rather vulgar mouthpiece and breathing in and out–sometimes with air available and sometimes not. The first test required closing the door on the little plastic box and having my body heat warm up the cage before we could start. So that during the test, I had the distinct pleasure of puffing into a tube and praying not to discover I’m also claustrophobic, but I was also sweating through my shirt.

For many parts of the test, we had to wait a period of minutes between them, either for the machine to recalibrate, or for my lungs to do so. After a few awkward minutes, Randy and I tried to chat about home ownership and the merits of getting a fixer-upper. but I kept seeing Steve Zahn in Sahara whenever he spoke, and I didn’t want to distract him from his work.

In the end, I think my lung function was normal — which pisses me off, because while it means I’m healthy, it also means there’s still no answer. I guess I’ll know in a few days when it all comes back. But I did get to leave with a hyperventilation headache that really hasn’t gone away, well over 36 hours later.

Ah, science.

Peering back into the intertubes August 4, 2007

So I’ve been offline for a while.

Between getting married, trying to remember to do thank-you notes to everyone and their brother, staying on top of a job that entered its “busy time” a month earlier than last year, and remembering to actually spend time with and relish the company of this fellow who just signed on to be Mr. Temple, why, I’ve been a busy little bee.

I’ve taken my exhaustedness out on the interwebs…not fucking around online and checking out weird sites, or checking out obscure reviews and blogs…barely even reading the news feeds I’m a little geeky about from time to time. Let alone actually posting on a blog. It all just seemed “too much,” like the online world was just too broad and expansive and dipping into it even slightly would ruin me for good. I’dsit in my chair, make an attempt to dive into my screen and see what piqued my interest…and I’d be uncomfortable in only a matter of seconds, shifting in my seat and aching to be anywhere else.

So I’ve been reading a lot of magazines, touching the hard edges of books in stores, playing Scrabble and relishing the hard edges of the wooden tiles, and biding my time until I felt I could come back.

We might be there now. The weather today turned a bit cooler and I realized that my online malaise might actually have nothing to do with the intertubes.

We don’t have air conditioning, and what with it being the middle of summer, there have been some warm and sticky days. It’s come to my attention that my home computer sits in a decidedly unventilated corner of the room and it’s just really too uncomfortable to web-surf and sweat.

With a little cloud cover and temps in the 70s, this evening is a web junkie’s paradise. Soon we’ll all be wearing sweaters and my posts will be a mile long.

Of course, it’s August…so we probably shouldn’t hold our collective breath. One more heat snap like the one we had a few weeks ago, and I’ll be forsaking the web in order to leaf through a newspaper in the freezer aisle of the grocery store.

So Neither of Us Bailed… July 5, 2007

So I am officially married.

I think the only things I’ve done over the past 2 weeks are eat, drink, travel, and hug people I haven’t seen in years.

And I’ve barely been on my bike in the last it seems like forever.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had the time to write another review. You can find it here.

There will be stuff on biking or otherwise being physically active in the very near future. To be perfectly honest, I’m debating bailing on the TNT team. Thanks to many supporters like, oh, some of you reading this, I’ve raised a fair spot of dough for a very good cause….and I’m learning that, injuries aside, I’m really not much of a joiner. All the people on the team are very nice and seem like a lot of fun. But every time I think about going out to ride with them, I suddenly develop a very nasty headcold.

It could well be that, after going and getting hitched, I might have done all my joining for the year.

No decisions made yet for sure. Mulling. I’ll still keep riding and plan to do a century this fall, even if I quit TNT….Who knows…I might even have more to write about, since I won’t be spending all my spare energy avoiding spending time with a group.