As many of you know, I've been struggling recovering from spinal surgery, which was done 13 months ago now. So, here's an update for friends.

The pain has been helped a LOT with acupuncture and feldenkrais. I suggest anyone with chronic pain due to injury and spasm or anything, if you can, see a feldenkrais practitioner. They do a muscle retraining, "brain re-education" which is a very gentle therapy designed to teach the brain how it needs to move you to minimize the pain. For instance, when my back is all stiff when I bend, the practictioner explained that there's no reason for that. The back isn't involved in bending; the hips are. My brain doesn't realize that, and it's using my back. So, lying on a massage table, she rhymically moved my hips, "teaching" my brain that it could do so while my back was relaxed. I sat up and bent. I have pain when twisting. I thought this was pulling on the screws.

Maybe, she says, but the lumbar spine is not supposed to be involved in twisting. Twisting is done mainly from the thoracic spine and the hip, and the rest of the spine rolls like a log roll. So she's teaching my brain to use my thoracic spine to twist, much as she taught my lower back to let go.

She's great.

I'm also seeing an acpuncturist, and it helps also. I am more mobile after each session. It doesn't last, but it stays for a while. And it's better to get bi-monthly acpuncture than take a lot of pain drugs.

That being said, I still have the problem that I am NOT fused, and that the screws are loose in my spine. My pain doctor wanted to give me radiofrequency ablation. (I'm getting the strange feeling that I've already written this. OMIGOD, Have I?)

Anyway, I looked online to find out about this, and found an abstract of a review of the studies. I emailed the address of the writer, and asked him if he'd email the whole article. I wanted to know if this was safe and effective.
The guy PHONED ME and told me no way should I let them do this. I won't go into why, but it's about having had surgery. Turns out he was from the mayo clinc. I told him aboutt he loose screws, and he told me he'd talk to the head of the Spine Division about them.

Then I got a callback in another 5 minutes, telling me I'm scheduled to be seen March 5, that loose screws can cause damage, and someone should be following me more closely.

So, I"m going out there. Like Billye when she went, the trip is the issue. I was able to vacation on reward pionts from charging so much, and get a first class ticket, so I could lie back. But I have no more miles, anda the tickets are a fortune. I'm dreading the preparation for the trip, but I do think it's a good thing to do.

I have an embarrassed sort of feeling about it--that it's not really necessary, I'm going to be fine, why am I making such a big deal?

And you know, somehow I do feel like I'm going to be fine, but I think it's just due diligence that I go there.

That's the update.