The business of pain
Prior to this week, I have never had any firsthand experience with chiropractic medicine. Sure, I have seen adverts and literature about it, but it has always seemed like a distant subject to me—something that you hear and know a little something about, but nothing more. I knew it has something to do with adjusting one’s musco-skeletal structure, mainly by manipulating the spine, in order to cure or at least relieve many types of bodily pain.
My relationship with this science remained as such, until just this week, when the need to be more personally involved came calling. The calling came in the form of a recurrence of a long-standing lower-back pain ailment, which started to manifest some 25 years ago after an aikido injury, but which did not recur with the frequency that would categorize it as a major problem. This time, though, my other half’s good sense prevailed, and after our son had some success with his own lower-back pain problem, I was finally convinced to pay a visit to our friendly neighborhood chiropractor.
Turns out that among the capital’s cognoscenti, chiropractic is already something shorn of novelty. I am just one of the last to know about it. But no thanks to the reality of pain, I am now initiated, albeit rather belatedly.
The one I go to is supposedly among the country’s finest. He has been the chiropractic doctor for the Philippine Olympic Team and national teams for other international competitions for a fairly long time. So he is well-known and greatly respected in his field.
I have only had one treatment so far, and normally my case requires a program of treatments that runs for about a month. However, I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the results. Before, I would be in excruciating pain for around a week to a couple of weeks, and would have very restricted mobility. This time around, I am feeling much better after less than a week— something short of a miracle. And all this without the benefit of drugs or medicine, apart from the occasional NSAID tablet to alleviate any extreme pain. My jury is still out on whether chiropractic would now be my treatment of choice for this unfortunate problem. But so far, it is looking promising indeed.
One thing I can say, though. Lower-back pain is a painful business for the sufferer. But for those in the practice of chiropractic medicine, pain is good business indeed.