By Mordechai Schmutter
Ever since I wrote a couple of articles this past summer about my herniated disc, readers have been writing in to ask how it’s doing.
Though that’s not how they ask it. Mostly, they give suggestions, all of which conflict with each other. And with my doctor’s, whose suggestions I’m going to try first, if you don’t mind. Though I do appreciate the thought.
OK, I guess some readers might need a little bit of background (oy):
According to experts, 80% of the population, at some point in their lives, experiences back pain. That might sound impressive, but the back takes up about 50% of your body, give or take (my stomach is pretty big), so odds are pretty good that it’s going to hurt sometimes. I could also tell you that 100% of the population, at some point in their lives, experiences headaches.
So in my ongoing attempt to be a regular, normal guy with problems we can all relate to and laugh about, even though laughing hurts our backs, I slowly, over a number of years, developed major back pain, which, on top of everything, was stressful, which made the back pain worse, which made things more stressful, and so on.
This all culminated at the beginning of the summer, when I collapsed a few times, and I realized how bad I am at commando crawling. I can’t get anywhere. I should have gotten my kids to smear me in butter so it would be easier to drag myself around the house. But then everyone would fall and hurt themselves, and before long we’d all be dragging ourselves around on the floor. We’d also be milchig.
It turns out that I had a herniated disc. The human spine supports our entire upper body, including our stomachs, and it’s made up of more than 30 small bones stacked precariously on top of each other, like Jenga pieces, and these are held together by spongy discs made out of, in my case, marshmallow fluff. And sometimes the fluff herniates, and it gets all over the place, and your back sticks. And then the Jenga pieces start sliding around, and you’re out.
At first, I went to a chiropractor, which is a sort of doctor who tries to bend you into shape manually, using medieval torture devices. They use the torture devices for a while until the patient says, “OK, I’m better! I’m better!” and then they send him home.
But it turns out that my chiropractor’s adjustments actually did feel good, as long as he was doing them. Unfortunately, he kept sending me home.
“Could I bring home the medieval torture devices?” I wanted to know. Not that I could get them into the car, with my bad back.
But then one day, while I was tying my shoes, my back seized up, and I couldn’t get out of bed for three days. A friend finally carried me to an actual medical doctor, who prescribed some pills, and later, some physical therapy.
So now I go to therapy twice a week, where I shell out a small co-pay, and in return they try to kill me with stretches. Basically, the way therapy works is that you come in and lie down and they have you stretch yourself in various comical positions, then they massage you for a few minutes, and then you get up, collect the change that tumbled out of your pocket, and go home. (A lot of people lose change. That’s how they make most of their money.)
They also give homework. I have to do stretches at home twice a day. I made the mistake of calling it “homework,” and now my kids want to sign a paper saying that I did it and write whether I did “excellent,” “very well,” “good,” “fair,” or “other.” Either way, I now have the longest getting-up-in-the-morning process ever. Yes, most people stretch when they wake up, but I have a regimen of carefully selected stretches that I have to do a certain number of times. And they keep adding new stretches. They never take any off. I’m up to like 45 minutes of stretches. And I do them in bed, so I keep falling asleep.
I wasn’t sure whether I should continue seeing my chiropractor on top of this, but my therapist cleared that up.
“Don’t see your chiropractor anymore,” he said.
“But you don’t even know my chiropractor,” I said.
Apparently, the physical-therapy community is against chiropractors, for some reason. I don’t see how what they do is that different.
Of course, there are a lot of things I don’t know about chiropractors. For example, I didn’t know that they don’t call themselves chiropractors. They call themselves “doctors of chiropractic.” And that bothers me, as an English major, because chiropractic sounds like an adjective. Chiropractic what? Not chiropractic medicine. They don’t prescribe medicine. I guess it’s better than just being a general “doctor.” They’re doctors of specific.
But I looked into it, and I now know that there are a lot of unethical chiropractors out there, because they’re not as regulated as doctors are, and a lot of them might not be good for you, because you have no idea what they’re doing behind your back. They know you have problems turning around.
But I was unsure about physical therapy too. Would it get rid of the problem? People seemed to say that it would, such as the testimonial I read that said, “The exercises healed me! Now, every time my back hurts, I just do the stretches!”
Wait. What do you mean every time?
They’re nice at the physical therapist’s office. They basically give me a bunch of stretches designed to push my marshmallow fluff back into place. It’s like working out, except that none of the exercises are particularly difficult, unless you’re injured. It’s like a gym where no one judges you and goes, “You’re doing those pushups wrong.”
“Yeah, well . . . This is how they told me to do it. Waist touching the bed.”
My stretches are mostly things that seem simple, like getting up on my hands and knees and raising one leg and the opposite arm, like a dog pledging allegiance, and then switching. 20 times. The counting makes it harder.
Also, a lot of my stretches involve me bending backwards. I think the goal is that, by the time I’m done with physical therapy, I’ll be able to massage my own back with my feet.
Here are some of the other stretches they make me do. Don’t do these stretches unless you’re first evaluated by a competent physical therapist (as opposed to an incompetent physical therapist who keeps dropping patients, tripping over the medicine ball, and walking into the broom closet):
Band stretch. For this one, I take a humongous exercise-grade rubber band and tie it around my legs, and then I pull my knees apart and snap, the rubber band goes flying across the room, and someone who was just visiting now has to start going to physical therapy.
Bicycle stretch. For this one, I lie on my back and pretend I’m riding a bicycle. Up a steep hill, apparently. I never get to go downhill.
Leg lifts. In this stretch, I lie face down and lift my legs, one at a time, like I’m walking into the ground.
Superman stretch. For this stretch, I lie on my stomach and that’s it. Just my stomach. Like a teeter-totter.
The therapist also constantly keeps reminding me to breathe. Because when I do the stretches at home, I forget. That’s why I keep losing consciousness. I also come in so he can remind me to do the stretches slowly. He is totally obsessed with this. I have to move slowly and savor and enjoy them. He has to keep reminding me of this, because it’s boring, I’m doing it twice a day, and I just want to get to the part where he actually massages me. So I’m doing leg lifts so fast that it looks like I’m running into the ground, trying to win some kind of race, and I’m doing my Superman stretches so fast I look like a fish flopping around, gasping for air.
“Breathe!” he says.
“How?” I ask. “I’m lying on my stomach.”
But when I finish doing all my stretches properly, I get my massage, which is like the adult version of a lollipop. And then after that, they attach something to my back and electrocute me for about 10–15 minutes, and I’m not sure why. Half the time I don’t even know what they’re doing back there. I can’t see a thing. I haven’t gotten to the stretch where I can turn my head 180 degrees and diagnose my own problems, like an owl.
So the short answer is that I’m getting better. But slowly.
Maybe I should try something else. Fortunately, my readers have sent suggestions that conflict with each other. Stay tuned for next week’s column, in which we’ll discuss some of these suggestions and try to figure out why there are so many of them.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of five books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.