Oh, My Aching Back

By Nick Jacobs

Sometimes, the most helpful medicine is simply sharing stories with each other about how we coped with a health issue. I’m hoping that by recounting a recent month in my life, you might find a little encouragement, a little insight and even a little humor in my journey of medical madness. 

Over the past 50 or so years, I’ve managed to throw my back out about a dozen times, but the most recent was the “mother of all backaches.” In 1971, my wife and I bought an old used iron bed for $6. Because the standard built in metal box springs were not part of the investment, her father, a highly skilled metal worker, made us metal slats to support the mattress and box springs. Consequently, getting into and out of that bed required a running jump from the bedroom door.

Apparently, that jump often led to a sprung back for me. This time, however, when I went to the chiropractor for what would normally have been a simple maneuver, I ended up screaming the Lord’s Name in vain at the top of my lungs. In fact, I could hear other patients running out the front door of his office. After one more attempt at an adjustment, my profanity switched to a more common word that is often heard now in certain types of rap music. 

I tried to take Tylenol because I’m on a blood thinner for AFIB, but it never touched the pain which, by then was equivalent to what I can only imagine is the feeling of a 50-caliber bullet lodged in my spine. My wife, with all of her strength and might, had to help this screaming ole guy in and out of chairs and even off the toilet. 

A call to a physician friend resulted in my diving into a world of Russian Roulette where I mixed Aleve with Tylenol and blood thinners, steroids, and added a muscle relaxant which threw me into three hours of 150 bpm AFIB, yet gave me little or no relief.

Then I started physical therapy which resulted in my learning how to lean on my upper body strength to get up and down with the use of a cane. By then screaming had become a regular part of my ambulation. 

Finally, after three weeks of complete agony, I loaded myself in the car filled with the meds and had replaced the relaxants with Valium. I drove two hours to my former PCP in Mars, PA while weaving carefully between the lanes of the turnpike in a half-awake daze. This 90-pound, 30-something osteopath had me lay face down on a manipulation table, informed me that her surgeon husband had had the same malady, pushed a little on my right hip, had me do some isometrics, leaned on me just a little bit, and I was healed. I didn’t need the cane, didn’t need the pills, and didn’t need to scream. So, what was her magic? No one seems to know, but if it takes an ambulance, she’s my first stop next time I pop my spine. 

Nick Jacobs is a partner with SMR, LLC and founder of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, former board member of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Jacobs maintains a website, Healinghospitals.com.