There once was a girl in the Midwest
Whose life sometimes felt like a test.
She’d found her good health was precarious
Every twinge she proclaimed the scariest
Till her doctor finally begged, “Give it a rest!”

I’m absolutely fine, really, but once you’ve had cancer — and if you’re kind of an anxious person anyway — guilty! — you start to see and feel bad things happening everywhere.  I don’t even remember when I wrote this, but it was months ago and my check ups have all been great!

But, yeah, I still feel twinges.  Doctors tell me some twinges are probably nerves healing from the surgeries.  Others are muscle stiffness and soreness as I began exercising.  The chemo left me with numbness in my fingers and toes that eventually has gone away.  But it took months…

And I’ve had occasional back pain for years — ever since I was 19 — so those twinges don’t scare me in the same way.  They’re just annoying and sometimes incredibly painful, particularly when I get muscle spasms after my back “goes out” as I call it. I’m not exactly sure what happens, but over the years I’ve had at least a half-dozen doctors tell me that it looked like my spine was out of alignment.  I’ve seen an osteopath for adjustments and more recently a physical therapist.

Now I’m going to a chiropractor and have progressed to twice a week adjustments.  It was a little scary at first to trust someone to put that much pressure on my spine and neck while pressed face down on a table, leaving whatever eye makeup I’m wearing on the tissue paper under my face.  I’ve learned to put mascara on afterwards!

I’m feeling so much better and more energetic after only two weeks of treatments.  And they have this incredible traction table that you lay on, on your back, and rollers underneath move up and down from your shoulders to your tailbone.  Anyone who’s sat in those big massage chairs when you get a pedicure knows the feeling I mean.  And this table is like that chair on steroids!  (I asked for one for Mother’s Day, but I think the cost was prohibitive…)

I have four weeks left before we reevaluate but I think I’ll be going for “tune ups” forever.  And, of course, I’ll be doing the back and neck exercises that I should be doing anyway.  And this time I mean it!  But, oh, how I love that table *sigh*