A Miracle in Medical Land

Mia Rose - You won on anniversary week and I have not heard from you. Please contact me at jana (at) janadeleon (dot) com. If I have not heard from you by this Sunday, I will pick a new winner.

The last couple of weeks, I've been suffering with enormous back/neck pain. The root of the problem is apparently a pinched nerve that runs down my neck and to the center of my back, just to the left of my spinal cord. And you'll never, ever guess what activity hurts it the most - yep, typing. What are the friggin' odds, right? I could probably go dig a ditch and be fine, but NOOOOOO, my problem has to be typing. How lame is that?

And of course, there's the whole other issue...typing is sorta, well, necessary to both my jobs. I mean, you all know I write novels, but the job that pays the bills and provides the insurance is the day job and at that job, I'm a technical writers.

So this problem is not new and has repeated itself several times in the last five years or so, so this time instead of just loading up on pain killers and muscle relaxers, I decided I was going to try something different and see a chiropractor. After all, it was no coindence that the same problem kept recurring in the exactly same place. Well, an x-ray told the whole story - my spine from the base of my neck to the center of my back is curving to the right, which is pulling everything on my left side. So when experiencing extreme overuse, the muscles knot and pinch the nerve and it take simply FOREVER for it to work itself out. The doc is trying to fix the problem, but fixing the problem involves loosening the muscles surrounding my spine enough for him to force the vertebrae back in line. And it will probably take months of visiting twice a week to get anything somewhat permenant accomplished. Of course the alternative is to walk like the hunchback when I'm 60 and need some maryjane for the pain the arthritis would bring, so vertebrae popping seems like a better choice.

So I asked how this could have happened, and my doc (who also did sports medicine for the NY Jets) says it's a impact injury. Put simply he said "you've played hard. This is the kind of injury I used to see in football players. Did you play sports?" So I said "Yes, motocross." So then he says "Well, that would explain this injury and the dislocated shoulder and the fractured collar bone." And I stare and say "I've never dislocated my shoulder or fractured my collar bone." So he stares and says "Yes, you have, and I promise I won't ever ask you about your tolerance for pain again."

But you see, my curved spine and unknown fractured parts aside, that's not even the miraculous part. The miraculous part is (drumroll please) He didn't even once suggest that if I lost weight, the problem would go away!

You see, my regular GP, whom I love but is sometimes a little silly has suggested that everything I have wrong with me could be cured if I'd just lose weight. And I mean everything. His latest was how I could cure my allergies by losing weight. According to my GP, if I lost weight, I'd be thinner, younger, more beautiful, smarter and posses talents I never knew about if I could fit in a single digit size. The hole in the ozone layer would close, world hunger would be solved and I'm fairly certain Michael Phelps would have won NINE gold medals (even though he only competed in eight events) if I'd just dropped five pounds or so before the Olympics started.

So, you know me, a glutton for punishment. I can't let it lie, so I had to ask. "I suppose if I lost weight, it would make it better." And get this, the doc actually says, "well if you were in here for knees or lower back I would agree, but not where this is located." Unbelievable, a golden opportunity for a doctor to tell me I needed to lose weight and he didn't even take it....a miracle in medical land.

Deadly (Gimpy) DeLeon