Movement
I was kicked by a cow. I was 2 1/2, flew about eight feet, collided with and burst through the wall of a hemlock interior sheathed barn wall, and stuck right there. I can still hear my grandmother's racing heart, pounding breaths as she ran with me from the barn, across the dirt road toward the farmhouse. Somewhere along her run I really passed out. A day later, I was toddling about the house and that was good enough to call off any thoughts about doctors.
When I was in grade school, my mother was taking me to a pediatrist, whose object was to figure out if I was pigeontoed, as they used to call it -- I haven't heard the expression in probably 30 years now -- so I must have been listing or wiggling in some kind of peculiar way by then.
When I was 12, bent over working on digging out grass clippings from the reel lawnmower nearby where my mother was hanging out clothes on the line, she heard every vertebre ofv my back as it audibly clicked into place as I stood up. That evening she raised all kinds of hell with my disciplinarian father and the next night I slept on a brand spanking new Sealy mattress and box spring -- the first of the kind in our home. Dad was not pleased.
When I was in grad school at the University of Iowa, 1966-67, in the middle of April, just before the end of the semester (smart move), I walked back up the hill from my rainy day approach toward the quanset huts where we took Writers Workshop courses, wallked into ... Schaefer Hall, I think it was, and signed myself o-u-t of enrollment -- walked over to the nearby restaurant where I tended bar and waited on tables (Stan & Mary's) and asked for a fulltime job: Stan wanted to build a real bar for the college crowd in the cellar, to be called The Peanut Shell, shucks all over the floor as suited the era. I had carpentry expereience and set to work. Two weeks later we were almost done when, walking down the bilco stairs with a full 49" carpenter's toolbox, my back went out. It went out so badly that for the next two days I could not be moved, moaning in bed while my rib cage threatened to come apart right above my heart. My roommates laid me out on a door and carried me out of the cellar where we lived nextdoor to the restaurant and into the upstairs quarters of the retired chiropractor, Dr. Funkhauser. Deftly, he had them tip me onto my feet and ujp against the wall from above which hung a plumb that reached to just above the floor. He felt along my spine in one pass and said, "Aha..." placed his fingers in a particular spot and pressed firmly, suddenly, and my spine fell back into place. Just so, the pain evaporated and I stood tall, firm, bewildered, and soon walked out of the place on my own two feet and motive power. I've been a supporter of chiropractic ever since -- and no "soft tissue" crap for me: give me the solid, confident, bone moving touch of the expert, thank you.
Curiously -- thankfully! -- my brother-in-law chose chiropractic as a career. He tended to me as moments permitted, he living on the West Coast, I on the East. One day he X-rayed me and shook his head at the results: I have not only a kink-i-ture but a nice counterclockwise spiral. An act of god that I actually walk he -- and later others have -- said.
In my late thirties/early forties I suffered so badly my ife took things into her own hands, signed me into a chiropractor that we (under consultation with the brother-in-law) had selected but about whom I had been pro-fessionally-crastinating. He was good and no namby-pamby either. I stayed with him for about twelve years.
In my late fifties I awoke one morning, lifted my left leg from under the covers and toward the floor, and when it hit I nearly blasted off throught the ceiling. Sciatica. I was in bed, unable to move much, for two weeks. It took three months to survive the worst of it. At first I could not walk, and later I took up walking as the only apparent defense against the pain.
Next week, I expect to go on a canoeing vacation onto the Bog River Flow just south of Tupper Lake, NY. I have dreaded the rare canoe trips we have taken in recent years: they have been no fun -- lugging that entirely serviceable but far too too #80 heav-y 17' Coleman RamX onto to cartopper or along mere half mile portages and back, unloading at the end of it all. Pour me a drink. I made it!
The new canoe is a 40# kevlar Bell and it is manageable: my wife can throw it onto her shoulders and walk away as if it were a shawl, so you know that I can do just about anything I wish to do with it and not break breath.
For now, though, there are other things on the platter: tomorrow I'll mow the lawn, move some furniture around, maybe transplant shoots of a lilac that I've been surveying; and I'll thank the Living God that life has been so good, so kind to me. After all, I have movement.
When I was in grade school, my mother was taking me to a pediatrist, whose object was to figure out if I was pigeontoed, as they used to call it -- I haven't heard the expression in probably 30 years now -- so I must have been listing or wiggling in some kind of peculiar way by then.
When I was 12, bent over working on digging out grass clippings from the reel lawnmower nearby where my mother was hanging out clothes on the line, she heard every vertebre ofv my back as it audibly clicked into place as I stood up. That evening she raised all kinds of hell with my disciplinarian father and the next night I slept on a brand spanking new Sealy mattress and box spring -- the first of the kind in our home. Dad was not pleased.
When I was in grad school at the University of Iowa, 1966-67, in the middle of April, just before the end of the semester (smart move), I walked back up the hill from my rainy day approach toward the quanset huts where we took Writers Workshop courses, wallked into ... Schaefer Hall, I think it was, and signed myself o-u-t of enrollment -- walked over to the nearby restaurant where I tended bar and waited on tables (Stan & Mary's) and asked for a fulltime job: Stan wanted to build a real bar for the college crowd in the cellar, to be called The Peanut Shell, shucks all over the floor as suited the era. I had carpentry expereience and set to work. Two weeks later we were almost done when, walking down the bilco stairs with a full 49" carpenter's toolbox, my back went out. It went out so badly that for the next two days I could not be moved, moaning in bed while my rib cage threatened to come apart right above my heart. My roommates laid me out on a door and carried me out of the cellar where we lived nextdoor to the restaurant and into the upstairs quarters of the retired chiropractor, Dr. Funkhauser. Deftly, he had them tip me onto my feet and ujp against the wall from above which hung a plumb that reached to just above the floor. He felt along my spine in one pass and said, "Aha..." placed his fingers in a particular spot and pressed firmly, suddenly, and my spine fell back into place. Just so, the pain evaporated and I stood tall, firm, bewildered, and soon walked out of the place on my own two feet and motive power. I've been a supporter of chiropractic ever since -- and no "soft tissue" crap for me: give me the solid, confident, bone moving touch of the expert, thank you.
Curiously -- thankfully! -- my brother-in-law chose chiropractic as a career. He tended to me as moments permitted, he living on the West Coast, I on the East. One day he X-rayed me and shook his head at the results: I have not only a kink-i-ture but a nice counterclockwise spiral. An act of god that I actually walk he -- and later others have -- said.
In my late thirties/early forties I suffered so badly my ife took things into her own hands, signed me into a chiropractor that we (under consultation with the brother-in-law) had selected but about whom I had been pro-fessionally-crastinating. He was good and no namby-pamby either. I stayed with him for about twelve years.
In my late fifties I awoke one morning, lifted my left leg from under the covers and toward the floor, and when it hit I nearly blasted off throught the ceiling. Sciatica. I was in bed, unable to move much, for two weeks. It took three months to survive the worst of it. At first I could not walk, and later I took up walking as the only apparent defense against the pain.
Next week, I expect to go on a canoeing vacation onto the Bog River Flow just south of Tupper Lake, NY. I have dreaded the rare canoe trips we have taken in recent years: they have been no fun -- lugging that entirely serviceable but far too too #80 heav-y 17' Coleman RamX onto to cartopper or along mere half mile portages and back, unloading at the end of it all. Pour me a drink. I made it!
The new canoe is a 40# kevlar Bell and it is manageable: my wife can throw it onto her shoulders and walk away as if it were a shawl, so you know that I can do just about anything I wish to do with it and not break breath.
For now, though, there are other things on the platter: tomorrow I'll mow the lawn, move some furniture around, maybe transplant shoots of a lilac that I've been surveying; and I'll thank the Living God that life has been so good, so kind to me. After all, I have movement.
posted by Duct Tape at 1:34 PM
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