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Friday's Foaming Rant: Spinal rap
So I had to go see a chiropractor in New York, and they're different to osteopaths, chiropractors, because of the spelling. And they crack your bones, that's what they do, they crack your bones! And they take X-rays, but it’s pointless, because whatever is wrong with you — "You've got a bad back, I'm gonna crack your bones." "You've got diphtheria, I'm gonna crack your bones." "Your head's come off! I'm gonna crack your bones." "It looks like your mother! I'm going to crack your bones."
— Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill
Anybody out there have a bad back? No, don’t stand up. Just stay where you are, all knotted up on the floor like a CIA prisoner in Urassisgrassistan, moaning.
I first blew out my back in the mid-Seventies, during a rare foray into honest labor, helping deliver major appliances for beer money. One day the strong guy who actually knew what he was doing called in drunk, and I tried to manhandle a double-door refrigerator up a narrow staircase and into a third-floor apartment using only a hand truck, a skinny roommate and sheer force of personality, and pop! Next morning I couldn’t get out of bed without assistance.
This was not uncommon. After all, I was an undergrad majoring in dissipation. What was unusual was the pain, which was not in its usual spot between my ears, bespeaking Falstaff in quantity, but rather in my lower back, which was oddly askew, my pelvis a degree or two off plumb and one leg shorter than the other.
Long story short: I tried drugs (college, the Seventies, remember?); traditional medicine (more drugs, and legal too, yay!); and finally, a chiropractor. The bone-cracker worked out of a crumbling Victorian that had endured fewer summers than he had and was stuffed with arcane machinery I was certain I’d seen in "Young Frankenstein." After a few questions and a brief hands-on exam, he fitted me into what looked like a dentist’s chair by M.C. Escher and without a hint of a whisper of a warning abruptly cracked my back like a crab leg. Snap! Crackle! Pop!
And just like that, I was fixed.
That was a long time ago, but the back problem resurfaces now and again, because I am hearing-impaired as regards advice, no matter how sensible. Lift with your legs, not your back. Stretch. Do your sit-ups, and balance them with back extensions to build a strong core. Do a little resistance work and cross-training to correct the physical imbalances caused by too much cycling.
And it’s never something epic that lays me low, the kind of war story you can stretch into two, three, maybe four free pints at the pub, if you work enough dramatic pauses into the tale. "See, it was me, Trebon and Johnson off the front, and I give Trebon a bit of the old shoulder going round a slippery corner and put him into the course tape, which leaves Johnson, who I figure may be a sucker for some off-color crack about his old lady, which is both correct and a real bad idea, ’cause he jumps off his bike, uproots one of the Crank Brothers barriers and swats me like he’s Barry Bonds going for No. 756. And that’s how come I’m all sideways like this on my stool. Say, anybody else dry here?"
No, it’s always a house-of-cards deal, a bunch of little things stacked neatly one atop the other until the whole deck flutters down in a heap. This time it was the aforementioned disregard for preventative spinal maintenance exacerbated by dragging two weighty boxes of some-assembly-required bookcases into the basement and performing said required assembly, lugging another bookcase up the stairs and into the garage, a little too much cyclo-cross training for a 50-something, bald-headed fat bastard and the piéce de résistance — switching out the pedals on a couple of ’cross bikes while bent over like a freshman congressman as Nancy Pelosi passes out plum committee assignments ("Thank you, ma’am, may I have another?").
Twang!
So instead of getting in a bracing hour of ’cross on Monday, I spent a noisy half-hour with the chiropractor. Not the same one — this one was talking yoga and homeopathic ointment instead of muttering odd bits from H.P. Lovecraft ("Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"). Still, some things never change. Now, as then, I have no health insurance and paid for the adjustment using hard-earned beer money.
So remember, kids: Lift with your legs, not your back. Stretch. Do your sit-ups, and balance them with back extensions to build a strong core. Do a little resistance work and cross-training to correct the physical imbalances caused by too much cycling.
Or not. Downtime can have an upside. Landing on the injury list spared me a long editorial meeting in Boulder and an even longer drive home, in the snow.
That sort of thing gives me a pain, too. And not in the back, either.
So where'd this one give you a pain? Send your diagnosis to us at webletters@insideinc.com. Be sure to include your full name, city, state or nation, and credit-card number for billing purposes. — Editor
