Glorious
“The stories you are about to heard are true
the names have been changed to protect the innocent”
― Dragnet
We’ve been decades into the movement of alternative medicine. I can’t trace it personally to earlier than the 60’s, but then, a lot of movements started in the 60’s, so isn’t that as good as any? Yet, we know it’s much earlier since the actual field of Osteopathic Medicine exists. Manual manipulations were known very early and practiced in the United States since before the Civil War. Medical schools, however, that allowed full practice of these Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine, DO’s, did not hit mainstream until the 50’s. There are at least 40 medical schools in the US that bestow a medical degree on these students, in a profession that prides themselves on “whole body” medicine. That has always made the most damndest sense to me. We know everything is connected. We know. Why does mainstream medicine seem to shun alternatives that seemingly make a whole lot of sense? It's all connected.
We have allowed conventional medicine to deny the kind of connection that would enable such things as these the whole body connections? Eastern medicine. South American medicine. Strange Brew. Anything alternative. 100% some of it is pure quackery…But we know for sure that some of it really works…And really works well.
We could look to Critical Race Theory to describe the rise of Western Medicine for us…which would arrive at the dominance of the capitalist, corporate CEO and educated MBA who is in charge. (by percentage, most likely a white male in the United States and Europe). This, of course, would be misleading and incorrect. Western institutions were not designed by conspiracy rather they are based on the certain philosophies of Plato and Aristotle that would have us break things into components and organize things into a hierarchical fashion. No different from the rise of any western institution trying to make sense of an ever increasingly complex world. Pirzig splits the difference between subjective and objective reality quite well. Where do you draw the line? As an engineer, I struggle to find a better way to do it then the ways in which we've been taught in our western schools. At some point you have to make spreadsheet , choose a ruler, and draw a line. You need a standard of measurement. Then you can decompose your structure and build upon it. It’s not rocket science, but with it, you can indeed build rockets. And apparently rocket ships and starships and self-driving cars…and ultimately the artificial intelligence that will bend our human run at greatness. That said we should look forward to the glide towards other human knowledge as it joins the AI machine. By default all AI is skewed toward Western information which is predominant in the machine. In theory we've already added the songs of every bird to this cacophony of information. Once we understand what they are saying…maybe they will straighten us out for us.
If you’ve been following my odyssey closely you will reasonably discover that moving between pillars of medicine are completely obtuse in the sense that connections between medical boundaries have long been established and are basically inviolate. The same first principles have applied in medicine as they have in the western sciences. I am in a rehabilitation facility for rehabilitation using the practice of Physical Therapy. I am not permitted to be rehabilitated by any other field of medicine. There is no chiropractic care at Folsom. There is no cold therapy. I would like an icy plunge…it would probably be horrifyingly painful…what if, the cold plunge, just contracted the L45 disc sufficiently to leave the nerve root alone, rather than relying on the truck full of steroids I’ve been dumping in my body. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the medical effects of steroids. I will not be riding the Tour de France anytime soon, so bring on the doping. Why wouldn’t you? If the Olympic committee shows up at Folsom to test my blood or urine, I would let them, and then ask them how I get to the full therapeutic effect of these substances. But, here at Folsom, we also don’t have access to the latest peptides and exosomes, and we certainly don’t get fetal stem cell treatment here.
There are so many other, other than mainstream, healing practices out there, none of which are available to me while on the inside. On the outside, however, the sky is the limit depending on my wallet, not necessarily the largess of my health insurance company. But first things first. What the fuck is wrong with me? We haven’t even had a diagnosis yet. This is perhaps solidified by the absent neurosurgeon who decided not making making a decision was preferred over making a decision. There's merit to ultra conservative. Particularly when cutting into the nervous system. I'm not an idiot although I play one on TV.
I'm relying on his expertise, his coup d’oeil, his Napoleon's Glance. A lifetime of knowledge and experience both good and bad. Cutting and drilling into a human nervous system with first hand, his own, knowledge of both good and unfortunately some really bad outcomes. Neurosurgeons have to be some of the most stoic humans on Earth to live with their own superpowers. So conservative care, put this off until we know, makes more sense to me, then the seemingly high stakes rush I am in to find a mechanical/surgical answer to this painful proposition I found myself in with the profound inability to walk.
Lack of an inability to fund the alternative is a price that is now being paid in human at several levels, principally mine. Sure family and friends worry and suffer with me. I thank you all for that -- as well as the popcorn, white Monster, and Twix bars that keep showing up as contraband. Someone please slip in a hacksaw or nail file to me via Instacart if you are ordering today.
To be sure I'm dragging all of you into my drama as I write. It wasn't intentional, but now back by popular demand. At some point you will get bored and move on. I assure you I will recover. There are many in this hospital with me that will not be so lucky. Imposter syndrome overtakes me several times a day, I feel silly, I just want you to stand up and walk away. It's incredible to try. I have my body reveal it's weakness to my very eyes over and over again. It is humbling. There but for the grace of God go I. I got caught speeding, In God's house. I have been weighed and measured, and found wanting. I’ll footnote that one, But I'll save that reference for my book not for the blog. (A Knight's Tale). Still I want to fix to my medical condition. I don't want to be paying to the unknown gods of medicine for an alternative cure. I want a cure. But not a cure for wellness…fucking eels.
Major breakthrough yesterday. Is everyone cheering? I walked for the first time. It did not come as a result of physical therapy. It came as a result of dirty knowledge into how the body works. My first PT in the morning was very open and critical about the lack of alternative types of therapy here in the office. She told me she was unable to talk about some of the things she knew. They were, of course, fairly standard methods of manual manipulation. I cannot get manual manipulation here at Folsom…that has to be an outpatient procedure only, and only when I'm outpatient. When I had the C5/C6 flare up in my cervical spine 10 years ago it was traction from a chiropractor that allowed me to avoid surgery. And avoid it I did. I resumed playing soccer and all the other activities that continue to follow in the category of back abuse.
We followed all the PT as prescribed for the day. But upon leaving, she jumped up on one of the tables, lay flat, and basically told me to watch her hips. She said try this if you can. She demonstrated what is referred to as posterior pelvis tilt. It's essentially a thrusting motion forward with your pelvis…requires a pretty strong core to hold it there…not unlike the thrust required from many of you filthy bastards who seek the glorious nature of things missing. I'm not naming names Matt, John, William. William admits to his lack of core strength thus his requirement for practice.
Later in the day…while practicing standard PT in a Zero-G suit, I was essentially hanging from the ceiling in a harness. I was enduring the pain, not really, and trying to release the pinch in my L4/L5 through my method of simply bending over at my torso. The steps were painful as each time I weighted my left foot, I got a reminder. The feedback is brutal. The feedback is self critiquing.
The PT wanted me to walk up some steps. Slightly hanging, and with my hands on both hand rails, hunched over at the waist, I stepped up towards victory. As I brought my second foot up, you can almost sense what's coming next. I was freed to performed an almost perfect posterior pelvic tilt. I put my my left foot down and stepped up with no pain whatsoever. What the fuck just happened?
What happened was I opened up my L4 and L5 even more then I had been with the torso bend alone. I mechanically manipulated my own back into a pain-free setting. Seemingly a secret we are not allowed to discuss at Folsom. Holding this position however is not for the meek. It requires a strong core. Oddly, this is something PT can do. Help me build a strong core. Why can't we do both? Why can't we do both?
Now, having performed in this manner, the PT working with me was keen to add this to our repertoire. She's working for me to go home though. She wants this repertoire for me so I'm able to exist in my current state, from home. We did some flat walking. To put weight on my left leg requires me to have a firm grip on both sides of the walker, a bend forward in my torso, and the application of the posterior pelvic tilt. We’ve all seen it before. It is the gait of a 90-year-old man moving with his walker across the parking lot. Ladies and gentlemen…I give you the same gait, in the presence of a 60-year-old man, with a shitty back.
Holding that position is not for the faint of heart…But it gives me hope that I'm not going home in a wheelchair. That's said, there's no way I show up at the office using a walker moving slower than a box turtle crossing the interstate. I'd rather be in a wheelchair zipping in and out of passageways as I've been learning to do with the wheelchair I love down here at the institute.
What's more important is that I mechanically manipulated my back out of pain. This is what a chiropractor would do…probably in the first two minutes of entering his office. It took me two weeks to find this position in ordinary medical care. Perhaps it's the volumes of steroids I am taking that allowed the impingement to shrink to a point where the manipulation was even tolerable. But the manipulation clearly is mechanical and clearly releases the pain. Does this require surgery to fix?
That is one answer I can at least now seek. The name and address of the PT that led me to this solution has been withheld. Cue Dragnet.