Chiropractic works

One Friday night in late February, shortly after L’s brother and her mom had arrived for the weekend, I stood up quickly after squatting to feed the wood stove, and felt dizzy. I’m used to this; I’ve known the same response since I was a teenager. My dad has it too. I stand and feel the world close in for a second, before the blood rushes to my head and the lights come back on. I’ve always chalked it up to being tall.

Sometimes I will steady myself, put my hand to the wall, but I’ve never blacked out or fallen. This time, though, it was different. The light-headedness didn’t resolve as quickly as it usually does. Worse, it was accompanied by a tingling in my left arm, running from shoulder to fingertips, unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

The first time it happened, I sat back down at the dinner table, where the whole family was eating and talking, and quietly hoped it would go away. Slowly, the feeling did fade and I felt better, but when I rose from the table it happened again: the light-headedness and the tingling. By now, I was mildly alarmed, fearing I might be having a cardiac event. I quietly called L into the bedroom, and told her what was happening.

A few minutes later I was sitting in the emergency room, with L on one side of me and her brother on the other. The ER doc pulled out the stops: EKG, X-rays, blood work, I don’t even remember what-all. Clearly he was thinking cardiac. But he found nothing, and after three or four hours he turned me loose. “If it happens again…”

Sunday afternoon it happened again. I was lying down, alone in the house, when the phone rang. I jumped up to answer it, and wham: the blackout feeling and the crazy tingling.

This time the admitted me. I spent the night in the ICU, and had what the docs called the million-dollar work-up. Cardiac, neurological, stress test, everything. Again, nothing showed up.

Over the next month, I saw half a dozen doctors, and even wore a heart monitor for a couple of weeks. I was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug and a thyroid medication. I had a couple more trips to the ER, and nobody could find anything. I had five days, a week without symptoms, and just when I thought the whole thing had gone away, it came back.

Finally, I went to see a chiropractor. He listened to my story, palpated my spine, pulled and stretched and rubbed. When he had me relaxed, he deftly “cracked” my neck, cradling my skull like a dinosaur egg in his huge and knowing hands, and immediately I felt better, lighter. Walking home, I felt like I a weight had been lifted off of my chest, that I could breathe again for the first time in weeks.

It’s been a month since that visit. I have not had any more tingling in my arm or any feelings of impending black-out. I can’t find any convincing medical description of exactly what a pinched nerve or an “impingement” is, but I am convinced that something of the sort was at the root of my mysterious problem. My dad said to me, half-jokingly, “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” meaning chiropractic. “All I know,” I said, “is that after he cracked my neck I felt better, and I haven’t had a problem since.”