SCARIER Than Halloween

So this is my spine.

You might have to look closely to see it.

David took the picture for me in our bathroom Thursday night.

I had him take it because,  earlier that day, at our weekly session,  I had asked the very gifted woman who works with such care on helping strengthen the muscles that hold me upright to do something:

I had asked her to draw...

in white chalk on my brown shirt...

where the 'buttons' of my backbone were.

This she did and here are the results. This picture below is a close-up.

The lateral line is my braline.

If she had kept going and drawn the ribs too, we could all see that I'm listing sharply, like the Titanic, 30 minutes after impact. In the last few days I've been fixing to blog light-heartedly about this scoliosis that has so recently expressed itself in my body, even though one is apparently born with the condition. But then, just now,  when our ridiculously late Saturday mail finally came and I saw that Mass General had sent me  the images on CD of the MRI they did of my lower back, my comic impulse kind of drained away.The hospital failed to include any narrative about my case  - I will have to ask my PCP for that on Monday - but the images are pretty horrifying if I'm reading them right.The timing is funny because just yesterday Dr. Scott Fuller, the wonderful chiropractor I see every other week, took a notion all on his own to draw a sketch of my back,  based on his X-rays, and mail it to me.

I consider it such a kindness that he would do this for me. I have wanted so much to be able to really picture what was happening in there in there, so I could understand where the pain was coming from and maybe help alleviate it. 

Now I have these official images and I'm feeling more alarmed. It's what behind the little beaded curtain that's significant. And the curve looks different because this 'picture' is taken from the back and Dr. Fuller's was looking at me from the front.

My lumbar spine looks like the tail of a lobster! Now I just want to SEE Dr. Fuller, I just want to SEE Dr. Bennett and get somebody to explain what I'm looking at. It's hard to be alone with pain at night, but in the daytime at least it's nice to have some other kind humans willing to help shed some light on what's going on in your little insides. I don't feel hurt or mad; I don't feel like my body betrayed me – nothing like that. I just want to befriend this faithful servant who has done my bidding so uncomplainingly all these years..