I’ve made many significant physical improvements over the past week. A majority of that was the chiropractic work to decrease the inflammation around the muscles that had tightened so much that I could barely even walk. Now, I can walk around my apartment without a cane. I still use crutches to get out and around, but I can buy groceries all while using a cart, bring them home, and not feel terrible doing so. Success?
I had my two-week, six-appointment review at the chiropractor today, and as will happen invariably for chronic pain patients if you tell a doctor that you’re feeling less pain and increased mobility, they might accidentally forget the third part – “going too far will cause my body to snap back, like a rubber band” – and after I was done, my pain had increased, my mobility decreased, and my overall physicality snapped back some units of progress.
I’ve been to three chiropractic appointments out of the twenty that my insurance will cover per year, and, this route has made a substantial improvement on my health! Many of the muscles around my spine had become so tight that they were causing massive amounts of pain in my tailbone and sides. It was surprising it took from August 2020 to December 2020 to get to physical therapy, let alone chiropractcy in late April 2021, but, I’m here.
The funny thing about this spine pain problem that’s lasted over a year now is that whenever I think it can’t get worse, it does. The medications this third pain doctor prescribed were harmful-Methylprednisolone and ineffective-Mexiletine. It’s been rough the past few days. I feel like I’ve burned out quite a lot more energy than necessary. This doctor might want to screw around with my health but I haven’t been screwing around in my research.
On Monday, April 12 2021, my spine flared up worse than it ever had before. I messaged my doctor’s office to ask them for advice. They said they’d send the doctor a note. I messaged on Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Nothing. On Friday, I told them that if I didn’t hear back by the end of the day, in two messages, I would be forced to assume the doctor is telling me to go elsewhere. No doctor’s message.
“no no, eat
you’re skin and bones
you need your strength![1]” As of this writing, it’s been two weeks since my two spine injections and I’m feeling almost normal. I was well enough to stream today, but, I overexerted myself in the excitement of drawing and streaming. Throughout the past few months, I’ve found myself being nearly skin and bones. I had first noticed it when a doctor pointed it out some months ago, though.
I had my two spinal injections seven days ago, as of this writing, and I am feeling much better. I have been in significantly less pain, and have significantly more mobility, but the pain is still there and over the past few days it’s still been debilitating. I was able to go out the past two days to take care of some errands, but today, I wasn’t well enough to do that – still, I’m progressing.
I was watching a video of some people roadtripping without any flourishes and I had to break my mental perception of how much effort it would take for me to do that same thing, were I there, considering the lo-fi production quality and its overall relatability. I need my cane to walk around my apartment. I need my crutches to walk around when I go out. I’m anticipating a restoration of my health’s lost past.
WANNA CONSIDER HOW PAIN CAN MAKE PERSISTENCE MORE POWERFUL? CLICK HERE TO KEEP ON READING!
Yesterday, I planned to head up to the pharmacy today to take care of things, but my spine had other plans. I woke up after being asleep for about one hour to the worst spine pain I had ever experienced. Everything hurt. I was eventually able to get my spine to calm down, but waking up from that was the beginning of the next phase I had been worried about: I can’t imagine being physical.
I had my meeting with the two Functional Restoration doctors that were advertised as being the ones to help restore the function to my spine, and, I would say that their plan is probably about as good as it can be toward my long-term recovery. First, we have to fix the pain side of things – the tailbone specifically – and then we’ll try physical therapy again. It’s not fantastic, but it could have been much worse.
