The Pain in My Neck...

So I went to the chiropractor this morning, and he said, "Yup. Your neck is messed up!" And he did my favorite analogy in reference to neck stress--only this time it was about a bowling ball on an ink pen, not a bowling ball on a toothpick.

Here is what a normal neck looks like:


Do you see how the cranium hovers so sweetly on the gently curling base of the cervical vertebrae? It's very pretty I know. This lucky person can move his/her head forward, and the happy cranium still has a base of support below it! Nice!


Now, look at my neck:


Oh no! The poor little ink pen/toothpick of a neck! It's trying to hold that big bowling ball of a cranium up all by itself! Every time I lean my cranium forward an inch it puts ten pounds of pressure on the muscles on the back of my neck to hold that bowling ball up! Egads!


And the solution? Well, the nice man in the polo shirt clamps my head into a very uncomfortable position, and I think, "Hey! Didn't Jack Bauer just do this exact move on that Russian terrorist moments before the nerve gas was released on unsuspecting Los Angelonians?" (tangent: I'm into hour twenty of Season Five of 24. I think I started watching it on Saturday. TV on DVD is an evil thing to have at one's disposal.)

Anyways, the nice man in the polo shirt cranks my head around a few times and suddenly my range of motion has increased and he promises my hands shouldn't go numb anymore. Nice.

So I'll go a few more times, and he says it might just be how my neck has developed over the last 12 years because of my scoliosis and whiplash. And I think, "Hey. I would rather pay a co-pay and get a Jack Bauer hold once or twice a month for the rest of my life than have some arthritic neck condition that forces me into a Derek Zoolander lifestyle of never being able to turn left."

That's my story. And the best part of it? When I say to the nice man in the polo shirt (AKA, the Chiropractor), "Hey, do you think I should go to the massage therapist." He says, "I don't know if you should go or not, but it's definitely always nice to go to the massage therapist."

Amen to that Dr. Jack Bauer. You are a true American hero.

The Joys/Pains of Chiropractic Care

toothpastefordinner.com

The imminent time has arrived: it's time to go back to the chiropractor.

There seem to be a lot of opinions out there on chiropractors...I was raised by a mom and a dad and grandparents who always went to the chiropractor...and it seemed to be the thing to do.

Then--somewhere in health class they told us that chiropractors weren't really perceived as medical professionals...which is pretty confusing because they have the title "Dr." And when I was in high school, I had scoliosis, but going to the chiropractor only made things hurt worse most of the time, so I didn't like going. So I stopped going and signed off on chiropractic care (circa 1996).

Then, circa 2004, I was in this car accident and a few months later, I got really severe pain in my back, and I cried out, "Chiropractor, save me!" And he did. He pointed at an x-ray of my head and compared it to levitating a bowling bowl on a toothpick. (And I was like, man...4 years of school, and they couldn't teach you a more applicable metaphor?) But after 3x a week for like, a long time, and I got waaaaay better, and I was like, "Chiropractors are amazing!" Until my claim ended and they started charging me $50 per appointment, and I was like, "for $200 a month I could fly to Vegas and visit my favorite man-made things." (n.b. not that I WOULD do this, only to say I could party in Vegas or go to the chiropractor...not a hard choice.) I was like, "Chiropractic care is dumb again."

Until now. I spent most of yesterday lying on a couch, popping ibuprofen and rubbing my neck because two years post-chiropractor, it hurts really bad again. I lost range of motion, and my arms and legs started losing feeling. So...I know I need to go back and get continuing care on my neck.

This is annoying, because health insurance considers chiropractic care to fall under the deductible, and I want to go, "Stupid health care! I can't nod my head! I give you hundreds of dollars every month! Pay for something!"

So why do I pay hundreds of dollars for the just-in-case I get my arm mangled in a freak landscaping accident but not in case my chronic neck pain reemerges? How can health insurance compartmentalize my body like that?

And it's annoying because every time I move, I have to find new doctors...which requires waiting lots of days to get an appointment. And lots of small talk get-to-know-you doctor chatter.

But--there is the hidden bonus of going to the chiropractor: referrals to the massage therapist! Yes! Somehow this makes the whole thing worth it!

Anyways, on Wednesday morning, I'm headed to the chiropractor, when they'll tell me my neck is screwed up and I need a bazillion dollars in care, and I'll say, "Yes please." Mostly so I can feel my arms again.

This is all.

Yoga: An Introduction

For the past two weeks, I've been doing yoga at the Riverside Health Club. I just got a membership there through GlobalFit, which is a rockin' good deal, if you desire a health club membership. (Basically, I qualified for cheaper membership rates through my health insurance provider.)

Anyways--I was excited to go to yoga class, because I do the yoga videos at home. And last week, I went and bought a beautiful red yoga mat. Over the past two years, I've developed a love of the movement of yoga, which so very nicely parallels my upbringing in ballet.

At my first yoga class, I discovered that all yogas are not created equal. Although I had come to love yoga, I did not love this yoga class. I have titled it "Super Slow-Moving Yoga," subtitled, "The class where we stand in place for a really long time, not moving, so that we can meditate on how painful it is to stand in place for a really long time." I didn't know until last week that standing in place could be painful.

It turns out that there are lots of kinds of yoga, so I was surprised on "Super Slow-Moving Yoga" day because I thought yoga was about movement. Renee told me there are different kinds of yoga, and that I probably prefer "vinyasa" yoga because it's about flow and movement and not about standing still for hours. Oh. Good information.

So yesterday I went back to try a new instructor and met yoga I was more familiar with: "Painfully Fast-Moving Yoga Day" subtitled, "Doing lots of complicated back-to-back movements so quickly that no one notices you're repeatedly averting falling on your face and/or cardiovascular failure."

I was in between two middle-aged guys the whole class, so it was pretty easy to feel like I was going a good job.

That's when I made another startling discovery: it's harder to touch your toes when you have long legs. I was beating myself up that all the middle-aged and retirees could touch their toes and I couldn't, until I noticed that my legs were easily 4-6 inches longer in comparion to most everyone else's. This led me to important yoga discovery two: in yoga class, comparison is futile.

I am, however, excited to be at yoga class 2-4 times per week, excited to be exercising, and excited about my new, red yoga mat. Please join me in this endeavor, so our inner lights can greet each other.

Namaste.

Re: Running.

I want to update my last post with a "four days post-run" physiological update.

Here's the update: Running is from the devil and kills your body.

What's my proof?

Since running on Thursday, I have been having dull pain in my right knee and rather uncomfortable, spastic pain up my entire right leg up through my hip. At first, I was blaming this on the "Surgical removal of the meniscus in Heather's right knee, circa 1996," which often results in post-run knee pain during the first few weeks of running. Once my muscle tone builds up, the joint pain usually stops.

This time around, however, the knee has decided to rally my entire leg to its cause, which frustrates me immensely. Two nights ago, it was keeping me awake, so at 1:30 in the am, I crawled out of bed, downed three ibruprofen, and wrapped my knee in two ace bandages. I fell asleep within twenty minutes...which was pretty fantastic.

So last night, I decided to repeat what worked so well, and I woke up with a swollen right ankle.
It was so swollen that my foot was swelling uncomfortably out of my new black flats. And--when I removed the shoe, it was not evident-at-first that I was no longer wearing the shoe, since it was permanently imprinted on my swollen foot.

I could blame this inconvenient/horrifying circumstance on a birth defect, eleven years of ballet, the violation of my orthopedic surgeon's recommendation that I "never go running," or...the liklihood that I wrapped the Ace bandage a wee bit too tight.

Instead, I will be narrow minded and blame it all on running: the sport I love to hate.

Running: Something I love to hate.

So once every spring and fall I get this bright idea called, "I should go running." The desire usually manifests itself during a sunny day in which I've been feeling rather sedentary, and it's always spurred by hope that a few months of running will result in a body like Kate Bosworth ala Blue Crush. (I know she's a surfer...but for lack of surfing options, running will have to suffice.)

"I should go running" day always begins with hope and ends in rampant disappointment. Yesterday was the first of 2007's series of disappointing running days...

The day didn't start out spectacular. My car door was frozen shut, and I had to crawl in through the less-frosted passenger door and then attempt to kick open the driver's door. (To no avail of course.) So I was driving down Hwy 20, wondering if I'd ever be able to open the Driver's side door. (When the door, of course, thawed and opened. PTL that the door was locked, otherwise I might have been strewn on Hwy 20 with my car continuing on its way.)

By mid-afternoon, however, the snow melted and it was sunny and springish outside. I enjoyed a stroll across the lawn in my capri's, and immediately thought, "I should go running." I put on all of my favorite running year (capri track pants, trail runners, a Nike running fleece, a bandana, and my iPod). I did lots of stretches. I called my roommate to let her know to leave the door unlocked...and I began "running."

After about fifty feet of running, I discovered that the air was a lot colder than it had seemed an hour earlier, when I'd made the decision to run...but I pressed on. The air felt heavy at first. Then, it started to sting. And suddenly, of course, I'm 1/2 mile from the house, staring at the snow banks next to the river, hating my life. My knee was beginning to ache; it was getting dark; and now I have a 1/2 mile walk back to the house in the dark and cold, barely able to breathe.

I returned home, frustrated that Washington does not entertain year-round perfect weather so as to always cater to my "I should go running" needs. And I pretended that twenty minutes of ballet stretches on the living room floor equates to toned body in the same way that running does.

Six hours later, as I laid in bed, my knee was crying out in pain saying, "Darn you, Heather! If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times: low-impact activities!" I shrugged my shoulders, frustrated that running had once again seemed like a good idea, but confident that once the warm weather appears for real, I'll be compelled to try again.