Back to the Future

“Wow! In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never hear a crack like that!” exclaimed Dr. Braun.

I hadn’t either. At least not outside a rifle range and certainly not emanating from my spine. But fortunately, Dr Braun is a trained chiropractor so knows what he’s doing and despite emitting an involuntary grunt, more of surprise than pain; I immediately felt the benefit of the adjustment he was making.

I’ve had back problems on and off for most of my adult life but as they’ve never really bothered me all that much, I’ve been too lazy to do anything about it. However, now that I’m sliding kicking and screaming towards middle age they’re becoming more of a problem and it was clear I needed to get off my duff and do something. Even so, I would probably have procrastinated longer still if it wasn’t for a rather spectacular bike crash over Christmas which left me hunched over and in more or less constant pain.

I’d been whizzing along a dirt road at a fair old lick (well, fair considering this was my first time out for several months) and having the time of my life when I hit a big patch of sheet ice. The bike went off on a voyage of personal discovery and I went straight down, breaking the fall with my rib cage. It didn’t hurt too badly and I only spent a few minutes bent double and crying like a girl before climbing stiffly back onto the saddle and pushing my way on up the trail. I didn’t realize there was anything seriously wrong until about 5 hours later when I discovered that any activity more strenuous than lying down involved unimaginable pain. Not that lying down was pleasant either, it’s just that pain was...imaginable.

So, I popped a couple of Ibuprofen and vowed to take things easy for a few days. Which stretched into weeks. And still the discomfort stayed with me. Running, sleeping, lifting things, getting out of armchairs, all became much more challenging than they had in the past. It’s amazing how often one uses a back and yet we don’t appreciate it until it bothers us. Despite all this my general dislike of doctor’s visits kept me suffering in silence for a while longer. OK, not in silence, I grumbled incessantly but you know what I mean. It took a phone conversation with my sister who’s a licensed nurse and something of a bossy boots to finally push me into making an appointment.

“You’re an old fart now” she told me “these things don’t get better on their own like they used to.” Knowing she was right didn’t make this any pleasanter to hear but I dutifully set up a visit with the local sawbones.

“First thing we need to do is take some x-rays and find out how messed up you are.” said Dr. Braun. It occurred to me that it would take more than x-rays to figure that out but realizing he was only talking about my spine, I consented and stripped down to my goose bumps. Next, he produced a clever little device which consisted of two wheels on a handle. This he ran up my spine and by means of a long wire, the gadget transmitted data to a laptop on a nearby table. Apparently this was measuring the temperature difference on either side of my spinal column, which in turn, told us just how out of whack things were. A bunch of cool looking diagrams appeared on the screen and a series of colored bars, (green for good, blue for areas of concern, red for serious problems and black for “Holy ravioli – how do you stand up?”) told us that my back was very messed up indeed.

During my formative years, me Dear Ol’ Ma, bless her, never tired of reminding me how poor my posture was and constantly admonished me to stand up straight. Naturally, I ignored her but as I’ve also spent much of the last twenty five years hunched over a desk, I’m now paying the price, just like she said. My spine has a curve in it that would be the envy of a question mark. Disturbingly, I’m physically incapable of straightening it and even Dr. Braun was concerned.

“It looks like we caught this just in time” he explained, pointing at the x-ray. “Another couple of years and these two vertebrae here could have fused.” Not too late though so with treatment and specific exercises, we should be able to straighten things out – and probably add half an inch or so to my height. This was the good news. The bad was that I had a second, hitherto unknown curve to my back. This one went from side to side and was the result of my body’s attempts to compensate for my right hip being almost an inch higher than my left. I suspect this may have been the result of another, long ago bike crash and while I was aware that my profile wasn’t entirely straight, I didn’t know just how bad it was.

“We need to sort this out, or you’ll be having trouble with arthritis before long” said the Doc and I could see he was right. Onto a massage type table next and for fifteen minutes or so he worked me over in a manner I haven’t experienced since playground fights at junior school. He wrapped my arms around me, hauled on leg up over the other, twisted me like a pretzel and at regular intervals threw his own weight down on top of me in a rocking motion until something gave. Even back in my younger days, when I was a lot more athletic than I am now, flexibility was never one of my strong points but he contorted my skeleton in ways it’s never been moved before. And the curious thing was, I felt a whole lot better after it.

I’m not going to be mistaken for a Buckingham Palace guard any time soon, and when posing in front of the bathroom mirror, I can see there’s still a lot of work to be done before decades of spinal abuse are rectified. But there’s definite signs of progress and I already feel at least, oh, a sixteenth of an inch taller. So who knows, maybe the next time me Dear Ol’ Mum sees me, she won’t feel the need to tell me to stand up straight.

Wonder what else she’ll complain about?