I hurt my back last Thursday.

I have never had a back injury.  Like, never.  I’ve hurt my neck, broken my thumb, sprained my ankles, and torn my ACL, but my back has never given me problems.  As a chiropractor, perhaps this is to be expected, but in fact, the opposite is true.  Many of my colleagues decided to join this profession after having great success with chiropractic for their own back injuries, and many others now suffer with lower back pain as a result of the physical nature of what we do.  But for me, despite two babies, 225lb deadlifts, and a clumsy fall-down-often nature, my lower back had been spared.  Until Thursday.

Thursdays are my GSD day (Get Sh** Done).  I don’t have clinic hours that day, so my day often begins at the gym and ends at the grocery store, doing computer work, or cleaning my house.  This past Thursday, I was with my 9am crew working on back squats.  It was a 12-minute working segment; one back squat per minute for 12 minutes, with progressively increasing weight.  On minute six, I lost my focus.  I didn’t concentrate on my core, or my breath, and I heard a “click” from my back on the way down to the bottom of my squat.  I didn’t have pain immediately, but it’s not my first rodeo, and I knew exactly what I’d done.  I let my competitive ego take over, finished the workout, and then called the clinic.

I was in a treatment room less than two hours after that dreaded “click” and by then, I couldn’t even stand up straight.  But Dr. Dave worked his magic, and when I left thirty minutes later I was feeling almost 100%.  Through the weekend, my back pain came and went, but with some heat, core stability exercises, hot yoga, and a great Sunday long run, I am back to full function and pain free today.  Five days from start to finish; from hunched and bent forward in pain to a full deadlift workout at 6am this morning.  Chiropractic works.  That treatment set me up on a path of quick healing.

I’ve written about low back pain before, but this is the first time I had been on the other side of the coin.  This experience has grown my empathy and expanded my amazement with the wonders of my “job.”  It comes down to mechanics, and if we can fix your mechanics, we can get you out of pain and functioning optimally.  Quickly.