With only about seven days left before my trip, I have been nearly incapacitated by back pain. It's got me so stressed out. This all started about a year ago when I developed pain in my lower back that pretty much had me stuck in bed for two days. When that happened, it was really awful and I couldn't even get out of bed without some careful maneuvering. Since then I've had this happen almost once a month. I'll just move a certain way or lift something wrong and I know immediately that I've done it. It doesn't hurt very bad at first; it takes at least half a day to get really good and sore. Then it's messed up for about three days. It's never been as bad as that first time, but this might be the worst since.

So I'm sitting at my desk today and reached across to grab my coffee and almost yelled out loud from the pain. I wanted to go to my doctor, but I knew if I did he'd just want to take X-rays and all that stuff and then he'd just give me pain meds. I needed a better solution. So I remembered the name of a chiropractor that Kieran told me about and decided to give him a call. His name is Dr. Kopelove and he's located on Main Street in Laurel, MD. Very cool guy and he happened to have an opening this afternoon. Once I was in his examination room, he asked me to stand up straight in front of him, took one look at me, and muttered "oh, man" under his breath with a tone of pity. Apparently my back is all kinds of screwed up. I was already aware that when I stand up straight, one of my shoulders is about an inch lower than the other, but I didn't know that my spine is shaped like one of those mountain roads in a sports car commercial. Aside from being overweight and sitting at a desk for about 16 hours a day for the past few years, Dr. Kopelove and I think this problem has a lot to do with me breaking my femur when I was in the sixth grade and having one leg shorter than the other for a few years. I won't go into the details of that, but basically I compensated for one leg being shorter by curving my spine. Now it's all messed up. So I climbed onto the crazy chiropractor table and Dr. Kopelove pushed on some spots on my back and legs real hard, pulled on my ankles, and adjusted the mechanized table up and down in different places. That lasted about 15 minutes, after which he inclined the table and I stood up. I was totally impressed. The pain was not completely gone, but my posture was vastly improved. I felt very loose and was able to stand very straight without much pain at all. Then I went into a different room where I lay down and had electrodes placed on my lower back and a low current applied for about 10 minutes. When I left I felt so much better. Much better mobility and significantly decreased pain. It's not gone, however, so the true test will come tomorrow when I try to get out of bed. But so far so good. I'm getting on that plane next week if they have to wheel me on with a dolly.