Nothing to Sneeze At

After my last post and before my doctor's appointment on Friday, I discovered that I could not sneeze. I just inhaled, my back seized up, and suddenly I didn't need to sneeze any more. Again, it's amazing how much your back muscles get involved in.

I went to a chiropractic office in my old bank. (The doctor's office actually is in the vault.) He x-rayed me and gave me a preliminary diagnosis that my vertebrae are compressed, so there is less motion in my spine, so the muscles have to work harder (or the muscles move but the spine doesn't; I was a bit confused there), hence I strained a muscle.

His staff gave me a minor massage of the lower back, gave me an ultrasound treatment (I didn't ask if it's a boy or girl; I want to be surprised), and then sent electric pulses into my lower back for ten minutes. On the uninjured side, I could feel the pulses moving in a varying pattern. On the injured side, it felt as if someone was poking a bruise.

Next, I went back to the doctor to be "adjusted". (A show of hands: how many of you have known for years that I'm not well-adjusted?) I lay on my stomach, and he said he was going to give me a "little" push in the upper back. He said "good" afterward, but I was pondering how he didn't crack my ribs against the table. He did the same to my middle & lower back, and I was thinking how nice it was that he shoved so quickly. I then lay on my right side, feeling a little pain, and he adjusted my arms and legs into a Vesuvian death pose before pushing on my spine from the side. "This guy means business," I was thinking. Then came the hard part: my left (strained) side. My pain level was a constant 4 or 5 (10 being the highest) -- until he pushed. My pain jumped to an 8 (not high enough to cry out nor bring tears to my eyes), and I figured the guy was a masochist. Then I made a follow-up appointment for this afternoon.

It took until mid-day Saturday, but the muscle treatment appears to have worked. I could bend or take deep breaths or, yes, sneeze without pain. I figure loosening my vertebrae might take some more sessions, though.