after having a very painful morning proceeded by a rather painful night (which included some whining to the Bald One about said pain), I called my primary care physician and asked when I could see someone because I couldn’t really walk correctly. Instead of setting me up with someone, they sent me to their preferred chiropractor.
I’ve never been, really. Well, I went to one who did a bunch of free testing to get a client in but wanted to charge me full price for everything and have me bill my insurance after the first visit. Oh, and he wouldn’t tell me a gd thing until I came in for my second session. Not to mention the adjustment tables were in a large open room where anyone could see you. I wasn’t really comfortable with that…so out I went and never came back. This time was different. This time felt better from the get-go.
The doc came in and asked what was bothering me. Not knowing where to begin, I explained that this felt very similar to something that had happened about six years ago. The event that proceeded that was me working backstage on Damn Yankees and not having much time to get from backstage left to backstage right. In order to get there, I’d have to go into the back hall, run down the stairs, hit a wall, turn left and go twenty feet, turn right and go another forty feet, turn right again and dodge the clothing racks to go back another twenty before running up the stairs and come out backstage to calmly set a pyrotechnic pot with fuses and cable and powder in low light before setting it onstage in the next scene change. I’d then have to check the connection and go back to where I came from and be ready for the explosion in the next scene. Several times I’d skip about a half-dozen stairs…a few times were fairly bone-jarring, but adrenaline would get me through.
And apparently my body did what it often does – keep going until it’s okay to crash and burn. I very very very rarely get sick during a production. Since I’m often in a production, it means I’m rarely sick. To make up for it, as soon as I’ve got some time off, my body ceases to fight off every germ and they attack with a vengeance. This time instead of getting sick, my back acted up. I went to a doc who sent me to a physical therapist who noticed one leg was shorter than the other and yanked it so it wasn’t. That made some of the pain go away and we PT’d the rest out.
Now we’re up to today. I thought it was my hip again. I finished my show, I’ve been laying out on my couch and the new, firm cushions have been giving both D and I issues because our bodies aren’t quite used to the new cushions. I thought that’s all this was. No such luck. I was misdiagnosed six-plus years ago. What I actually did was goof up my lower back (L5 vertebrae to be exact) where the little fingers that come off the main portion are rubbing wrong and causing disk degeneration. I’m only late stage one (of three) so I’m not horribly bad off. But it does mean a few weeks of visits for me to get better. But now, I’ll probably actually get better.
Rae's Alley 