I mentioned to a friend recently that back in the '70s, the doctors wanted to fuse my back in three places - my neck, just below my shoulder blades, and at and above the tailbone. I would have had very limited motion. She expressed disbelief - "They don't do that any more!" Well, yes, things have changed in the past 30 years, but they DO still fuse. Ex-husband #2 recently had rods implanted, same basic idea, just more expensive.
So, here's the history of my back:
I was born with a fairly common genetic error, shared with you, Daughter, and with my mother, my little sister, and possibly my other sister. Our tailbones are incomplete. Normally, each of the four bones that make up the coccyx are one solid piece. Ours are each two pieces with blanks in the center. The centers of the bones never developed, and the edges are sketchy. A doctor once told my mother that if she were a dog, she'd have two tails. Not true, but illustrative. Anyway, the rest of the spine sits on top of and is supported by the coccyx. We do not have a good foundation. So even with no other complications, we are prone to sciatica.
In my youth, I had several severe but untreated back injuries, including a ruptured disk between my shoulder blades, and some cracked and broken ribs. (You know pretty much how they happened, and why they were untreated - let's just say that if it happened now instead of the '50s, my father would be in jail. Or a mental institution.)
By college, the early '60s, my back was "going out" regularly. I was also getting calcium deposits in the areas of the old injuries. "They" were giving me ultrasound treatments (the wonderful new thing at the time) to break up the deposits, but that just spread calcium sand all through the muscles, which abraded and tore the muscle fibers, and caused incredible bruising and pain (there was one whole semester when it hurt so badly to move my arms that I had a medical slip saying I was not to carry books to class), but it did nothing for the basic problem. All the prescription pain killers upset my stomach, so for several years I was badly addicted toAPC's - the military issue souped-up aspirin.
When I was teaching, in the late '60s, an osteopath decided (without benefit of x-rays) that my left leg was more than an inch longer than my right (the favorite diagnosis at the time for back problems), so for several years I wore a lift in my right shoe. It didn't help my back much.
By the late '60s, my body looked funny. My left leg was obviously longer than the right. My chest was lopsided - the right side ribs bulged out in the front, and the left side ribs caved in. My neck was perfectly straight, no forward curve. I had finally learned what I could and could not do, how I was "allowed" to move, so my back went out only once a year or so, but that once was a doozy!
In the early '70s, I was taking a shower in an old classic hotel in Chicago, while there for Company training, and I swung my head (my hair was small-of-the-back length), and whacked it on a heavy old porcelain lip on the wall. It didn't knock me out, but then and for several days afterward I had that "floating" disconnected feeling. And then ... the pain started. I had tic douloureux (aka trigeminal neuralgia) on both sides of my head for 18 months. (See http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/9339/10867.html)
The pain was incredible. It literally felt like my face was in fire, and there was a white-hot bar that passed through the center of my head from one side to the other. Anything would set it off, any touch to my face, turning my head, a vibration. I had anywhere from 3 to 10 episodes a day, lasting from 5 to 20 minutes, day or night. I couldn't wash my face. Brushing my hair was risky. My pillow touching my face at night frightened me. The doctors didn't believe me at first, because they said it never occurs on both sides, it never occurs when you are sleeping, it never lasts that long. They were convinced I was faking - until one day I had an episode in a doctor's office. In the first few seconds I produced several cups of saliva. You can't fake that.
The pain was bad, but after a while, I learned the Native American trick of leaving my body. I knew that it would get bad, until it reached a peak, and then it would begin to slacken. So when it started, I'd go into the bathroom and rest my shoulders on the edge of the sink and my forehead on the faucet, and let everything slump. I drooled into the sink. There was a lot of drool, and I couldn't swallow when the pain was on. I'd leave my body, and wait. Every so often I'd "drop back in" for a second to test whether it had peaked yet. When I was out of my body, I was a few inches above and to the left. I could see me. It didn't strike me as remarkable at the time. (What was remarkable was that ex-husband didn't know how to deal with it, so he ignored the whole problem. If you don't acknowledge a problem, it doesn't exist.)
Anyway, this finally kicked the doctors into action. We eventually discovered that my spine was twisted, to one direction at the bottom, and to the opposite direction at the top. It had probably twisted itself in an effort to take pressure off injuries. My left leg was not longer - it was dislocated at the hip, because my hip was twisted to the plane of my body. My ribs were sprung on one side and caved on the other because of the twist in my upper back. My neck was too straight because it was twisted. (In old photographs, you can actually see that my head is carried off center.) The only reason I still looked reasonable in clothing was because I was so muscular - it was my muscles that maintained a frontal orientation, not the inner structure (which is what had caused the hip dislocation - I had actually worked it out of the socket by trying to walk and stand straight).
When I had bonked my head in the hotel, it had actually lifted my skull off the atlas vertebra. The atlas vertebra had been under tension because of all the other twisting, so when my skull came back down, the atlas vertebra was almost an inch out of alignment. You could feel one end of it under the back of my left ear, the other end was under my right molars. I was told that I was very lucky - the spinal cord could easily have torn. That high, it would have been fatal.
My spine had to be straightened, or eventually I would simply collapse. The doctors wanted to surgically fuse the three areas of greatest weakness - the bottom, the middle, and the top. That was how they would straighten it, and keep it straight.
I was only about 28 years old. I couldn't face never again being able to turn or bend. I was willing to take a chance, and work on the slow fix. I went to a chiropractor three times a week for a year. He'd work everything into place, and I'd try to hold it there until the next visit. Eventually, muscles, tendons, ligaments stretched and shortened as needed, and everything would stay in place for longer and longer periods. After a few years, a chiropractor suggested that I strengthen my back. He recommended either weightlifting or bellydance. The weightlifting class was full. The rest is history.
The entire time I was dancing, (REALLY dancing - I did everything, and I was GOOD!), my back didn't go out once. My next back problem was after I had left husband 2 and started working for the Company. After not dancing for six months, and sitting at a desk all the time in a chair that didn't fit, it went out big time - that's when I lost the nerves to my right ankle. (And they screamed bloody murder as they died - so did I!)
Since then it has been spotty. I need to do something more to strengthen my back, but I can't really dance any more, because of my weight and knees, and I'm afraid to lift weights. Walking is good, but I can't (won't!) walk in the cold. Don't worry - I'll manage. I know it well.
So, that's why I got annoyed when friend poo-pooed my saying that the doctors wanted to fuse my back. What does she know!
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