My son seems to have back and neck pain whenever we travel. If it’s on a plane or in a car for any length of time I see him twisting around and stretching his back or neck. He’s asked me to rub it for him at times and when I ask him he can tell me where specifically it hurts him.
I suffer with spine issues. When I was young, or at some point in my youth, I injured myself. None of us knows when it happened or what the incident was, but it was damaged enough that over the years my discs were worn down in my neck until the damage was irreparable. If any of us had realized what was going on, we would have had it looked at. Ignorance prevailed and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I got a good understanding of what had been going on.
By then it was too late and I needed surgery, spinal fusion, to ameliorate the symptoms of inflammation, pain and and muscular issues. That helped, but it didn’t reset my spine. Degeneration continues and I deal with a host of symptoms as well as limitations on what I can do in general and what I can do without pain.
I don’t want my son to have issues in later life if there’s something happening now that can be identified and addressed. To have an eight-year-old say, “mom, I need to go to the chiropractor” because he’s in pain is worrisome to me. He’s young for X-rays, but in this case I thought they were warranted to find out if he had a congenital malformation or injury we were unaware of.
I talked to my chiropractor and we had X-rays taken earlier this week of my son’s spine. X-rays today are far less in the way of radiation than they were in the past and they only took the minimum needed. We left and scheduled a time to come back the following day for a report of findings after the doctor had had a chance to review the images.
The next day we met with Letisha, who showed my son and me everything they saw on the X-rays. He has some subluxations, multiple in fact, but nothing beyond that. He had nothing going on unexpected. There were no signs of injury or traumatic damage. In short, he’s fine. He is getting out of alignment on trips so we’re doing six adjustments on him over two weeks to see if we can get his spine back in alignment and have it hold. But otherwise, he’s just fine. Which is a big relief.
My son was interested in his spine and then I had a thought: I asked Letisha to bring up my X-rays. My son had never seen mine before. We were able to show him how my cervical spine wasn’t curved like it should be. We also showed him the butterfly plate with the six screws on the front of my c-spine and the two rods with the four screws on the back of that same area.
My son was fascinated with the images and I think a little impressed I had screws and metal in my neck. He knows I have “back issues” but other than that he doesn’t have much of an idea what that means. Seeing those images helped him understand a little better and gave him some insight on what was inside me that caused me to not be able to do things other people can.
The Big Boy Update: There’s this song I’ve been playing a lot lately on Alexa and on the car stereo. It’s a more acoustical version of a rock song I also like. When my son and I were in the car yesterday he told me, “mom, you need some variety in your playlist."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Two mornings ago my daughter got up and came downstairs, happy as always. I was far too asleep to be able to respond at the time and apparently so was my husband. She knew the dog needed to go out since Matisse was boisterously jumping on all three of us, happy as well that morning had arrived. She figured out how to get her leash, walk her outside, find the runner and hook the dog up all by herself without being able to see anything. When I woke up at the alarm a few minutes later I found her quietly sitting in our room, reading a braille book. I bolted upright, realizing our eleven-month-old puppy had probably gone to the bathroom at the front door, seeing as the door to our bedroom was open. My daughter calmly told me she’d taken care of it and then went back to reading her book.
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