Thanks for the info about magnets--I'll read it more deeply later.

For now, I just want to pass this on. After my doctor said there's something "anatomical" and it's causing spinal stenosis and radiculopathy, I was worried. But an old spiney wrote me, someone I met on the spine board when i was preop, and said that hey, everyone scars, and sometimes the scars are inconvenient and press on nerves or cord. Not to worry too much. Try some epidurals and if it doesn't get better, put off surgery a couple of years.

So I told my massage therapist that it was likely there were scars pulling on L4. And he spent an hour working deeply around all lumbar vertebrae, painfully, achingly deep, the deep that has you feeling something so deep inside the pain feels psychic. I went with it and just kept breathing, because at no time did the pain feel like a hurtful thing, just a hard thing.

He says L2 down are covered with scar tissue; he can feel it, so he's ripping it free and loosening the grip of the muscles. Will it last? Well, it's the nature of scars to want to contract, he said, and the nature of muscles to do that also. But if I keep working at keeping them released, I shouldn't have pain from them.

So here I am sitting at my desk all day, and my butt does not hurt one whit.

I'm amazed.

Yet again.