About once a year I end up in the emergency room with muscle spasms in my back so severe it takes a dose of really strong pain killers – Dilaudid, which is ten times stronger than morphine, and some really strong muscle relaxers – Flexiril and Valium, to make the spasms stop. Each trip is usually about four hours and a $100 copay. I spend the next day in bed, doped up on drugs while the muscles in my back slowly unclench. After my last trip to the ER in June, I decided I needed to do something about this.

I’ve been to doctors in the past but none have any real idea how to prevent the spasms from happening. They all agree that my scoliosis is likely the culprit but beyond that, they offer no recommendations as to how to address it. After talking to a friend and doing some research, I found a neuromuscular therapist and made an appointment.

At the initial exam she told me what I already suspected: even though my scoliosis is relatively minor, just a 32 degree curve in my back, it throws off everything else in my body. My back bears the brunt of it though, with one side doing 90% of the work and the muscles on the other side just hanging out like lazy jerks. Before she could begin addressing the imbalances, she ordered an x-ray, so she should visually see what my spine was doing.

She immediately called attention to two things:

1. I have absolutely no curve in my neck, which is called “military neck” and this is not a good thing.
2. I have an extra vertebrae.

“An extra vertebrae? I’m a mutant!” I exclaimed. “It would be better if I could breathe under water or fly. This is kind of a lame mutation.”

She laughed and then began the hard work – putting my SI joint back into place and getting the muscles in my back to release. I have a weekly appointment through the end of the year and hope to see an improvement.

I don’t write much about my crooked spine anymore, though a few (very old) poems exist. Vertebrae, was published in Connections Literary Magazine in Fall 2007. Yes, this poem is more than twelve years old and it decidedly not my best work. But, we all gotta start somewhere.

Right now I’m focused on corrected some of the things I’ve been doing – like crossing my legs. This pulls my SI joint out and so I’m trying to stop doing it. But it’s a habit and so I still catch myself doing it all the damn time. And once we can get my SI joint to stay where it should be I’ll begin exercises that will strengthen the lazy side of my back. For now, I’m going to write some new poems, maybe an ode to my extra vertebrae, maybe a love poem to the curve of my spine.