I’ve had a few people recently point out that I’ve neglected to post about what the deal is with physical therapy. I keep mentioning it, but never with any kind of explanation.
Well, long story short: I’ve had troubles with my neck for years, with no easily identifiable reason. It has recently been a lot worse, so I decided it was finally worth trying to do something about it and made a doctors appointment.
My doctor took some x-rays to confirm his “loss of lordosis” theory, then sent me on my way to physical therapy. It seems that my neck doesn’t do what a “normal” neck is supposed to; some muscles are too strong, others have atrophied.
They wouldn’t let me borrow my xrays to show you, so I made a couple “artist renderings” to approximate what they’d look like if they had given them to me:
See how there’s a nice upwards curvature on the neck in this one? That gentle curve allegedly helps act as a shock absorber for your head. Neat, huh?
As you can see, I don’t have that curve. This means that the muscles where my neck attaches to my skull are working a lot harder than they need to, causing discomfort, headache and rectal bleeding. Or at least I hope it causes rectal bleeding…
Anyway, I’ve been going a couple hours, twice a week. While I’m there, I do some stupid neck stretches (that I’ve dubbed “necksercises”) and then get a massage, followed by ultrasonic stimulation, electrical stimulation, heat/cold stimulation, and—inexplicably—rectal stimulation. I’m not sure the last bit has really helped anything, but these people are medical professionals, so who am I to argue?
