The Perfect Song Blog

A column on spines?  Yes!  A Spinal Column!

I agreed to have my spine checked out. I’ve been having lower back problems since my band days.  I went in like everyone knowing absolutely nothing about spines but thinking I had some maybe minor repair work ahead.

The doctor had me walk in place with my eyes closed, a really subtle trick after which you’re standing as you normally do without thinking.  The doctor shook her head and looked really concerned.

“I’m really concerned,” she said, underscoring my interpretation of her look.  Concerned.  Really concerned.  Not good.

“You stand with your right shoulder higher than the other,” she said.

I nodded.  “I’ve been doing that since I was a kid.”

She nodded knowingly.  I do not like it when a doctor nods knowingly.

Her assistant interviewed me to get some history.  “Were you ever in a car accident?”

“Yes, when I was 17, I hit ice, went out of control and smacked a tree head-on.”

“Were you wearing a seat belt?”

“I don’t think seat belts were in cars back then.”

“Any falls?”

“I grew up on a farm.  I fell off horses lots of times.  When you fall off a horse, you never land on your feet.” When you fall off a galloping horse, your body kind of tumbles along the ground in a fusion of gravity and physics.  It’s always awkward.

There was more that I didn’t detail.  Falling on my head on a concrete floor in my grandmother’s milk house.

Loading, unloading, setting up instruments and equipment, then repeating the process one, two and three nights a week for nearly 40 years.  (Hey, I started playing professionally when I was 14).

A fall from a scaffold, which is a story in itself.  Running with a wheelbarrow full of rocks, hitting a hole and flying over the wheelbarrow — another story.

How does an active human being not wreck his or her back?

A few days later I was looking at my spine on a series of x-rays.  “Your neck is curved the wrong way in three places,” the doctor said, pointing to a sad looking upper spine.  She brought her pointer to a second x-ray.  “You have two discs that have shifted out of place.”  Nope, that didn’t look good either. I could see them.  They’re going in the wrong direction.

“And you have a curvature to the left.  Scoliosis.  It’s genetic.”  Alright, I’m going to go back and find the family culprit who passed that one on to me.  Mom?  Where are you?

“And you’re in stage 3, the stage just before the discs start fusing and there’s no repair.”

Hmm.  Now I know why she was concerned.

“But I think there’s hope to help you,” she said.  I was hoping she’d say that.

I write this for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s a step in a new adventure, one I’m hoping will have a happy ending.

Secondly, if you’ve any kind of life at all, you’ve probably hurt your spine and it will catch up with you.

Get your spine checked.