Live Pain

I feel like I'm getting my ass kicked. Or like I've been run over by a truck. 

There was a three year spell without chiropractic visits due to a variety of reasons including a broken leg and a life put on hold. 

There were recent months of stepping on one pant leg under the bottom of my shoe. Same pant leg, different pants. Every day. Dozens of times. My extensive, self-taught and just enough to be very dangerous medical education, gleaned from years of previous chiropractic treatments and hours on webmd.com and google, led me to conclude my hips are out of alignment.

After pulling a muscle in my upper back reaching for a bathrobe and spending four weeks resting it, avoiding the gym, and obsessing over it, it was finally time to call a chiropractor. 

I knew it would take some work getting myself straight again. I guess I forgot about the ongoing discomfort during the process. Or maybe in my younger days I snapped back a lot quicker. Or maybe I am now so old now that I forgot how things actually work. 

A week into treatments my sternum felt like it had been hit with a battering ram. The knotted muscle in my neck and shoulder continues in misery four weeks in, but only if I move my head in certain useful and not always avoidable ways. For instance, looking to the right. Or up.

The pad of the thumb on my dominant hand is newly numb. The three years of numbness from the broken leg is currently supplemented by nightly spasms in my shin, foot, and toes.

A new hyper awareness about posture snaps me out of the slouch I developed through laziness and improperly laid out work stations. At least momentarily.

On the bright side, discomfort (and let's not forget pain) has always served to remind me I am alive. The quest now is for the days to come when the sensation of being healthy and energized is what makes me feel alive. Soon, I hope.