Post-Adjustment Blues

Tuesday night, my neck twinged. It was a small pain, but it was in an area that signals a neck spasm coming on for me. So I paid attention to it.

Wednesday morning, I was fine, but toward the afternoon and evening, I noticed an ache building steadily to pain in exactly the wrong places. I was so concerned I even took a muscle relaxant left over from the last neck spasm before I went to bed.

I woke up and was no better. So I took a double dose of naproxen and started checking my health insurance for chiropractors. The good news is, I found one close to my office. The better news is, when I sat down at my desk this morning and turned my head to look at my monitor . . . I figured out exactly what had been tweaking my neck. I have now re-arranged my desk so my keyboard and monitor are straight forward. This is a very strange configuration to me.

So I went to the chiropractor. I told my boss, "I can't afford to go to the chiropractor. But really, I can't afford not to."

I'm fairly pleased by this chiropractor. He has a sense of humor, and I feel like he knows what he's doing. In fact, almost scarily so. At one point, he was tugging on my right foot during the assessment and looked at me and said, "When did you sprain your ankle, and why didn't you mention it when I asked about your medical history?"

The answer was 2003, and I never saw a doctor for it so I didn't even think to mention it.

So what's wrong with me? My everything. Which I knew already. The way the chiropractor put it is that there's not any one big thing screwing up my body. Instead, I have a lot of little things each a little bit wrong. Stuff I've collected over the years. A minor fender bender that tweaked my neck. Whatever I did to a wrist when I was 15, that took cortisone shots and never really healed right. Sprained ankles (I think I've done both of them). I've had trouble with my SI joint (the pelvic joint where the base of the spine and the hips all mesh in together) for years, so anything else out of whack will make me favor that, again. Etc.

Interestingly, he thinks part of my problem is my growth spurt. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I grew probably four or five inches in a very short time. I thought this was normal, but I guess not. Based on the areas where I have trouble, he made this guess. He sees it mostly in tall women, but I told him that for my family, I am tall, and he seemed to think that could account for it. I guess I grew so fast that something in my upper spine didn't catch up with itself. That figures into the neck spasms. The fact that I spend hours in front of a computer each day doesn't help this, of course.

After the adjustment, I could tell my neck would not spasm. This is the major thing. I can also tell that everything in my body is in a much more useful place, and I have far more range of motion in a lot of places than I did when I went in. I also feel like I've been hit by a mack truck. I ache all over, including odd spots in my knees and wrists. This is all normal for me after the first couple chiropractic adjustments. Or the day after a massage, for that matter.

The chiropractor said about 15% of people have this hit-by-a-truck reaction to the first couple adjustments. I hadn't realized it was so low. Leave it to me to be one of the "lucky" ones. At least I know the drill. Drink lots of water and don't spare the naproxen.