Warning: This is long, and yet this is my story extremely abbreviated.
If you have pain anywhere in your body and you don’t know what to do, you may relate, and it may be worth reading until the very end.
When I was 6 years old, I remember crying because the bottom of my back hurt so bad I had to stop what I was doing. Today I am 46. I can still remember the sharp pains where my hips attached to the spine radiating out from the middle.
In elementary school,
I almost always missed most of December and all the fun Christmas preparations and parties. Why? Pneumonia, Bronchitis, Sinus infections, high fevers, you name it. When other people got a cold, I would come down with severe, stubborn infections. I remember spending days and nights in my parents’ bed. My mom didn’t want me to be left unattended due to the high fevers.
In 4th grade, we had music right after lunch. Every week half way through class my head would start to pound so horrendously that I could not hold the tears back. I would be sent home.
February 5th grade: The left side of my upper back (all around my shoulder blade) locked up and swelled up. It felt like a knife stabbing me at every breath. Any movement was unbearable. Three weeks of school was lost while I mostly laid flat on my back between doctor’s appointments. My most vivid memory from this period wasgetting a shot directly into the center of the worst muscle spasm. The tears flew uncontrollably out of my eyes. This was done with the intention of pain relief, but the traumatic experience changed nothing. It seemed like this episode connected my headaches to my lower back pain. Everything between my face, forehead, across the top of my head, the back of my head, neck, shoulder blades and into my lower spine never stopped from that day.
People say they get headaches or backpain.
Not me. I had a headache. An 18-year headache.
It would vary in intensity but never go away. The best it ever got was always annoying and exhausting. At worst I could not get out of bed or sit or be in the light. I could not finish speaking sentences because of the intense pain. During this time and onward I would have recurring nightmares at night that there was a tumor inside my upper spine that was killing me. During the day I just felt like there was pressure on the nerves in my upper neck. Whenever I would express this to doctors they would just say “that can’t happen.”
I could continue sharing these vivid memories and all the details. For weeks my neck locked up so I could not turn my head at all. You could not see where my neck stopped and shoulders started because it was so inflamed. For a couple of years I could not hold a pen or sign my name with my dominant hand due to severe tennis elbow. (If only I could have played tennis.) I could describe in detail the discouragement during the six months I could not taste any of my food. It was a sinus infection that the doctors and antibiotics were not able to tame. Or all the terrible memories of 10 months straight with severe hives. Swollen itchy bumps covered my body from the bottoms of my feet to the inside of my mouth and even my eyelids. On several occasions, I had to go to the emergency room. I carried medication in my purse in case the swelling would be in a place that would keep me from breathing.
Do I need to say I was desperate? Depressed?
My parents, myself and later my husband all were trying everything.
I have been through tests, specialists and treatment methods both traditional and alternative. I even went to a Chiropractor and decided never to do that again as I had never been worse than right after my chiropractic manipulation.
After all those years of trying everything, it would be easy to give up.
I am glad I didn’t give up.At age 22 I moved with my husband from Norway to California. My husband had been seeing Dr. Muncy, a Blair upper cervical chiropractor since he was 10 years old. He wanted me to see him and thought he could probably help me.
He knew about my terrible previous experience with a Chiropractor, but I trusted him. Besides I had heard how much help my mother- in- law had been helped with her severe headaches. After trying everything for so long the decision to go to another expert was tricky. I desperately wanted help. I also didn’t want to waste my money, time and get my hopes up once again for something that didn’t help.
Here’s what happened when I went in for my upper cervical appointment:
The Dr. wanted to run some tests before I told him what was going on because he wanted to keep it objective. The tests didn’t hurt. After 5 minutes he gently touched the place in my upper neck that I was having nightmares about. He said: “You have a bone out of alignment right here and it is putting pressure on the nerves that lead to the rest of the body”
Finally a Doctor who saw the origin of the pain problem.
He took some X-Rays and made a precision adjustment based on what he saw. Then he adjusted 3 bones in my neck and explained how extremely rare it would be to have 3 misalignments. I was told I must have had a trauma to my neck when I was little. This is consistent with what I know. It also explains why my health problems started when I was just a little girl. The adjustments didn’t hurt at all, unlike my previous experience. Inside me, I felt like something relaxed a little. I slept through the whole night for the first time in my life.
A healing process had begun.
My symptoms didn’t go away overnight, but clearly, I was getting gradually better instead of gradually worse.
I was actually improving, not just managing my pain. A few years after this first adjustment I had an A-Ha moment in the car driving home from the gym and grocery store: “I have no pain! My muscles don’t ache. MY HEAD DOESN’T HURT.” This day was the end of my 18year headache. I wish I could say I have never had them since. Unfortunately, I still get headaches when my neck slips back out of alignment, but they go away or get a lot better when I get put back in alignment.
Moving Forward:
It turned out that the injuries in my neck were substantial enough and had been going on long enough that I have some permanent damage. I will require lifetime maintenance Chiropractic care. The good news about this is that because of this husband, Gordon decided to devote his life to taking care of me and others like me. He continues after almost 20 years as an Upper Cervical Chiropractor to study hard so he can always improve and help even the most stubborn health problems. It is our purpose in life to help as many people as possible have as much healing as possible, first in California and now in Lubbock, TX. We moved to Lubbock because this is where Dr. Blair made the discoveries that led to my health. This is where we feel we can make the most impact to do the same. I feel deeply on my own body the difference between pain and desperation that chokes off all hope versus life flowing healing powers that live in my own body.
If you have been reading all this, there is a good chance you have questions. Maybe questions about me or possibly you have questions about the Blair Upper Cervical technique that got me started on the way to health. Do you have questions about your own situation? It will make me happy to discuss this with you. Feel free to call me or E-mail from anywhere, or make an appointment if you live in Lubbock. If you do not live in Lubbock, I will be happy to help you find the closes upper cervical doctor to where you live. I was able to find help and you can too!
Posted in Chiropractic Clinic, Conditions, Kids, Upper Cervical Doctor and tagged Blair Chiropractic Clinic, blair upper cervical, bronchitis, children, depressed, exhausted, headaches, healing process, hip pain, hives, inflammation, low back pain, Lubbock, misalignment, neck pain, nerve pressure, out of alignment, pneumonia, shoulder pain, sinus infections, tendinitis, tennis elbow