Ok, so I wrote this post a couple of days ago, while we were still on the road. I think I wrote it somewhere between Las Cruces, NM, and Florence, AZ, but for various non-interesting reasons, I'm just posting it now. As you read this, pretend you've time-travelled back a few days to when we were still driving. That'll make this more fun.
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Sitting in a car for 6ish hours a day is not the best thing you can do for your spine. You should trust me when I say things like that; I work for SpineUniverse.com. I’m a fake doctor.
My real title is Medical Writer, but since I started at SpineUniverse, I’ve learned so much about the spine and spine treatments that I often forget that I haven’t actually attended medical school.
In fact, all I have is an English degree, but I’m an English major who can spit out facts about epidural steroid injections and how our intervertebral discs dehydrate as we age.
So the other day when I was driving and I felt a twinge of pain, I said, “I think I have a twisted coccyx.”
I should point out here that learning so much about my spine has caused me to become somewhat of a hypochondriac.
When I was writing an article series on osteoporosis, I diagnosed myself as high risk. I do have a few of the risk factors—I’m small-boned and I’m pretty sure that my Grandma Walker had osteoporosis (the woman got shorter and shorter, and eventually even I was taller than her)—but I do a lot of good things to counteract bone loss, such as exercising and drinking a lot of milk (my daily latte really ups my calcium level, right?) and watching my vitamin D intake. I need to calm down.
My twisted coccyx diagnosis, then, is most likely not real. But saying something like “coccydynia” sounds so much cooler than whining, “My back hurts.”
All I needed to do the other day was some basic back stretches, so that’s what I did when we got to Las Cruces and the Inn of the Arts.
If I were a really good doctor (or if I really were a doctor, slight rearrangement and adjustment of words to make that a truer statement), I probably would’ve been doing these stretches every day and making Oesa and Sid do them, too.
At the very least, you’d think I could’ve written them a prescription for these stretches.
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When your spines in line you feel fine - D.D. Palmer, founder of Palmer Chiropractic College Davenport Iowa.
ReplyDeleteJim
If I were there I could "biologize" you, like I helped your sister at work when she couldn't seem to get her physiological processes to work appropriately! That would have been fun. Then I would have done the stretches as you ordered.
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