Quote:
Originally Posted by Red_Label
I fought this issue since 1997. It has forced me to quit serious classical and flamenco studies on multiple occasions, and go back to playing electric for a while. My right arm would go numb from the elbow down. I saw a specialist, and he told me it was an issue with my ulnar nerve. He gave me some stretches to do. They didn't really help.
Fast forward to a little over a year ago. I had been experiencing severe tension headaches for the past 7 years or so. I was receiving botox injections in the shoulder/neck/head area every three months for over a year... to try to paralyze the muscles so they wouldn't spasm into a hard golf ball-sized knot that lived behind my right shoulder blade 24/7/365. Massage and muscle-relaxers were minimally effective. Botox wasn't really effective. One day I got an emergency appointment with my botox gal (NP) and she's like "what the hell are we going to do with you???". So she starts digging way back into my medical charts and sees an old x-ray from a bicep tear (before I started seeing her). She's looking at the cervical vertebrae and sees a severely pinched disk at C6, then says "well there's your problem!" She then orders an MRI to verify. Yup... my C6 is toast.
So I had the MRI sent to my ortho (one of the best in the region). He did my disk decompression at L5-S1 two years ago. He tries a couple of epidurals on my neck (I've had 9 spinal injections at the lumbar and cervical sections... none really ever worked, but they won't do surgeries before trying them and I've had 4 spinal surgeries). So last fall he replaced my C6 with an artificial disk and orders PT.
I still get knots (especially after playing acoustic for an hour or more daily). And I still get headaches. But neither are near as severe, and the headaches are less often. I try to keep up the neck/ shoulder stretches that my physical therapist taught me. They do make a difference. When I went into the surgery, I knew that the solution was going to be a 50% surgery, 50% PT answer. Surgeries rarely just completely FIX an issue (except my gallbladder removal). But these things have helped me without question.
See a doctor (or chiro if you must). But don't be clueless for 20 like I was. I had NO freakin' idea that my spine was my main issue. It may be your posture, lack of stretching, etc. I do just about everything poorly (not relaxed enough). But in my case there was an actual issue there that no yoga, stretching, chiro, whatever would have completely fixed.
P.S. Forgot to mention that I saw a chiro 3x early on in my pain journey. He had me so messed up by the last treatment that I was in even worse agony (couldn't look straight ahead). I ended up seeing a talented young massage therapist that undid all of his damage, plus helped with the initial issue... in a single one hour session. I know that many swear by chiros. That's great. But for me personally, that's the last resort I'd ever try again for my spinal issues. No intention of slamming any chiros here. Just my personal experience and opinion.
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I have empathy for your point of view. You’re specific problem (note it is/was very different from the problem the OP described), didn’t respond well to chiropractic care. You’re body responded with muscle spasm and a painful reaction. You note that “all the damage” was resolved in a single hour session with a massage therapist. Damage to tissue is not resolved by a single session of any conservative therapy, but a painful reactive spasm can be.
The sort of problem you had, should be addressed with conservative care (chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage, rehab exercise)first, but if it doesn’t respond, it may be addressed surgically. It doesn’t mean that any of the conservative types of care are ineffective in general, it just means that they weren’t effective in your case. If we could predict what things would work 100% of the time in each situation, health care would be a much simpler proposition
Responsible health care practitioners of all sorts should use their skills with discretion. Reevaluation and continued investigation are needed when a case doesn’t respond positively. The danger when someone applies their personal experience to any situation that seems similar is that they might negatively influence someone’s decision and keep them from getting the appropriate help. I know your intention is to share your story, but it’s effect in a public forum does create fear (towards my profession) in a way that I’m sure you don’t intend.
If every person with symptoms like the OP’s decided that chiropractic care was dangerous or ineffective, there would be many, many people that I would never have been able to help.