Thu 09/18/2008 1:21 PM

chris finds out he's a mutant

Poor Chris has had a rough couple of weeks. Two weekends ago he started having some really bad back pain. By Friday he hadn't had much relief so he decided to go see a chiropractor for the first time ever. They sent him for an x-ray before doing anything to him, and after reading the x-ray the chiropractor told him he had arthritis in his neck and degenerative disc disease at the L1 and L2 vertebrae - right at the base of his spine. He performed some adjustments and scheduled Chris to return Monday to discuss treatment options.

What we didn't find out until Monday, is that after Chris left on Friday the chiropractor started looking more closely at the x-ray, and something prompted him to count the vertebrae. And that's when he discovered the true reason for Chris' back problems. The discs in that lower lumbar region are thin not because of degenerative disc disease, but because they are compressed by an extra vertebra! He was actually born with one more vertebra than he is supposed to have. That's what most likely has led to the arthritis in his neck and any other back problems he has had over the years. The funny thing is that he also had one less wisdom tooth than he should have, and he says now he knows where it ended up!

(In one of our typical sarcastic banter sessions the other day, he tried to garner sympathy from me over the fact that he has arthritis. I answered, "Yeah, so? I've had it for years," to which he replied, "But I have a birth defect!" At this point all I could do was raise an eyebrow at him, hold up my gimpy arms, and exclaim, "Uh, hello?!")

So, now he will be seeing the chiropractor several times a week for the next few weeks, and then once a month going forward. He told me that this chiropractor he is seeing uses new techniques which are much less scary than the typical image one gets when they think of chiropractic adjustments. I have always stayed far away from chiropractors, because I know my skeletal system is not the same as that of most people, and if you bend me in ways my body does not want to be bent, I will break. But Chris says this chiropractor doesn't do any of that; he only uses a small device which sort of vibrates each vertebra back into place one at a time. He has a couple of after-work appointments next week for which I will probably go with him, and I'm actually thinking I might see how this guy feels about treating me as well.

As if all of that wasn't enough to deal with, on Tuesday he stepped in a hole in the front stairs outside of his workplace, fell and sprained his right ankle. $:o\$