April 14, 2011

The Continuation of the Chiropractic Experience According to Brock

The hiatus is dead, long live the hiatus.

And so is my first series of chiropractic appointments, but soon enough I will be diving into the world of the public clinic and resume my appointments there. My intern will have many more diagnostic and treatment tools at his disposal, running the gamut from bona-fide blood tests to the “pew-pew-pew” of cold red lasers. For now, however, I must close the unjustifiable, inexplicable gap I created as life pulled my arm and took me into a tailspin like no other.

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We last left off with yours truly promising a follow-up to this tale of discovery and wonder (but mostly of discovery). My intern and I had just finished the physical process, which I have established to be more extensive than was anticipated. From there we went into a pattern of cervical decompression-palpation-flexion, proceeding into another pattern of thoracic palpation/mapping/lamina-digging, followed by some jumping on the bridge that is the lumbar, and rounding it off with see-sawing on the ilium/hip bone. Neither of us had ever anticipated any extra-spinal challenges, aside from my right knee making a rare phone call to the central nervous system for urgently requested assistance.

My General Physics class finished 30 minutes early one evening (we got out at 5:20 pm) and I had received a text from my intern indicating his immediate availability. Little did I know that we would be needing to use every minute for something so unexpected. What’s life without a little twist thrown in by the Lord?

In less than five steps away from the car, and a few more away from the entrance, my right knee suddenly felt compelled to go on high alert and tighten security, as it were. Whenever I would try to sit down or stand up, it did not want to cooperate so easily. It still obeyed my orders, though not without groaning and moaning under the 60 pounds sliding up and down. As soon as I alerted him to this, he tried to test the flexibility of some muscle by bringing my right leg over the midline. Only as this was occurring, something else within that area felt the need to cower and falter in pain.

After we seemed to be getting nowhere fast with this, he brought his staff doctor to peruse me. In less than a minute, she got everything she needed to know about my sudden case. So she asked me to point out my “belly button” and take my finger somewhere nearby, and an instant later I felt a train spike land at the makeshift crosshairs. She asked if it was tender, and I said it was -- how could I be blamed for being surprised at such an unexpected jab like that? (That same spot remained sore for the next few days -- that was how strong the pressure was.)

A few minutes after, I was reminded of my past experiences with massaging my mother’s feet at certain places. That was me trying to practice reflexology, having as its premise the normalization of organ systems through said rubbing of the feet -- for example, the brain would be at the top of the big toe and the sinuses on the other toes, and the spinal column on the inside edge of the arches. That’s the theory behind it, anyway. I personally haven’t placed much belief in it, partly because my mother kept showing the same complaints over and over again, with little sign of an end in sight. In the present case, though, I felt a hint of a calming aura. And all of that for the inguinal ligament, which is a whole degree separate from the knee altogether. Which still held tight as a Burmese python to its ever helpless prey.

So I went out of there knowing it to be the busiest day for me and my intern -- it was definitely different from the usual cycle. The knee loosened up after a couple of days, either under the impression that it was going to stay stuck the way it was or after it found an opportunity to fix itself. Either way, I’m looking forward to my first pair of free $250 Foot Levelers custom orthotics, which will do wonders for my horrifically flat feet. They would make Fred Flintstone proud.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ha! This is funny...I didn't know you had a blog!!!

(I guess I've been issuing too many write-ups of other bad residents like you...)

Brock B. said...

I'm honored, Chris. Especially after said bad resident doesn't remember getting a write-up. ;)