This Savage Art

I’ve been out of commission for the past week with a back “problem”. I was “diagnosed” with a “herniated disc” about two years ago. Why the quotes? Mainly because everyone who has an opinion has a different diagnosis of what is wrong with my back. Let me begin at the beginning…

I drove on and off for a car service for over a decade of my adult life. The cars were wrecks, each one driven into the ground until its imminent death. The owners couldn’t give a shit about the comfort of the drivers or the passengers for that matter. Sitting in that position for a ten hour day along with bad shocks and just generally bad maintenance is what I believe caused my back to go all SNAFU. I was driving when I first felt that initial twinge of pain that turned into what felt like total paralysis. My lower back just seized up. Standing from a sitting position turned me from a relatively healthy thirty-something to a man searching for a tailpipe to suck on. The pain was intense and looking back I can’t believe I actual drove in that state. I got an MRI and was told I had a herniated disc. Great! Now what? What do you do when the circumstances of your situation prove to be too painful to bear. You take drugs. So I took drugs. Vioxx. Like Good and Plenty. The Vioxx helped, a lot. It allowed the inflammation to go down and that allowed my nerves to remain calm. It worked so well Merck had to take it off the market because it “had indicated a significant 4-fold increased risk of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack).” Ooooops. don’t want that.

I followed up with physical therapy and that helped too but like anything that makes the human animal veer from its daily routine I couldn’t wait to finish it and feel normal. I did for a while but every now and again something would trigger it like sleeping the wrong way or having brain dead masseuse press down hard after I insisted she not touch “that area”. This time wasn’t at the hands of a masseuse though. I didn’t do anything abnormal. I woke up. Last Thursday I gradually went into pain and muscle spasms. I knew there was nothing that was going to stop it right away. This meant drastic measures. Pins and needles. I decided to try a acupuncturist in lower Manhattan, not too far from my apartment. Nice enough guy. Fresh out of school about a year. I was in no position to fear the needle. I was in pain. I went for it. It didn’t help though. In fact I felt worse. So I pulled out the big gun, Dr. Li from Brooklyn.

At the recommendation of Linda’s mother I took a $30 cab ride out to Bay Ridge to meet the infamous Dr. Li. When I walked in I thought he was an assistant. Young man, around 30 (I later found out he is actually 50. Maybe this needle/herb thing is the way to go?). I did the intake with Dr. Li’s Russian translator/assistant where I was asked all sorts of questions. That’s always fun. I showed Dr. Li and the Russian my MRI info and they just shook their collective heads. Lets just say they have a serious distrust for Western medicine.

Now I am on the rack lying face down with a electro-stimulation pad on my lower back. I’ve done this before so I wasn’t freaked. I just let him crank it up. Like a thousand little pins massaging my back, it went to work for about 20 minutes. After that, the needles. Dr. Li hit me up with about 10 needles. Then he went all Frankenstein on me and attached the electrodes that sent pulses into my lower back. I lied there for about a half an hour twitching and pulsing as I read about K-Fed and Brit through my face hole in the massage table. Here’s the fun part…after that treatment the Russian slowly pulls the needles. The Russian, from what I hear, was nursed back to health from a stroke at the hands of Dr. Li so I can understand the dedication to the man. Short and compact and a physical therapist by trade, the Russian pulled out the needles. Most came out easily except for the last two. I asked him as he tossed them into the red plastic container that read BIOHAZARD what happens to the needles. They go back to the government, he said. Cynically I replied, “What, so they can sell them back to us?” Yes and maybe when they do they do this… He then proceeded to drag the 6 inch needle that was in my back across his tongue. Mmmmmm. Holy fucking shit! Yeah, I’m still getting over that image. That and the giant wooden ram’s head he was wearing around his neck.

I return to Dr. Li and the Russian today. Hopefully everyone will have had lunch before I get there.