Acupuncture and PT Update

Thursday was another round at Magna with Robert. He electrified me again:

A handful of the nearly 30 needles in me, with 4 of them being "charged" (2 pairs).

I had him crank the power pretty high, and my left side was "twitching" the entire time they were in. (The sensation slowly dies down over the 25 minutes the needles are in, and usually I stop feeling the juice by the end of the session, but not this time.) This has been helping to loosen up my lower back as I'm working on that disc issue. Thanks Robert! See you in a few days...

Last week, I met with my physical therapist twice since learning my leg pain is (most likely) stemming from my disc issue I've had for the last nearly 3 years. I posted some notes from out first meeting in THIS post last week where I noted doing back-bends nearly hourly every day. When we met again on Thursday, she was happy with the amount I was doing (noting "if I have one client who I KNOW will do his exercises, it's you!"), and I told her that my lower back was starting to feel a bit better (maybe going from a 3 on the 1-10 pain scale to a 2). I also realized after reading stories with Henry in bed on Thursday night (a few days after starting these exercises and just a few hours after my acupuncture with Robert) that my first steps down the stairs felt different - they DIDN'T HURT. I haven't had that sensation for 2.5 years. So hopefully this means we're going in the right direction!

The stretch my PT had me doing looked kinda like this:

Slowly up, pause at the top, slowly down, 20x.

But now she's having me be more aggressive and do this:

Don't judge my 60 sec Photoshop job. It's not like I teach that for a living. Oh wait...

I'm very careful bending forward especially when picking things up. I sit with good posture. I learned I can't do certain core or leg exercises without aggravating my lower back a bit, so I'm not doing those for now. Still no biking or running, and I'm still OK with that.

BUTTTTTT... now that I'm starting to see the SLIGHTEST bit of improvement, I'm STARTING to wonder (and hope) when I can start running again. Well see. Back to some back stretches...


p.s. OK, I can't NOT note that I just Googled "cinder block" and threw that shitty Photoshop job together in a minute. The boys are napping and I have a bit of time to myself and I don't want to spend it all making a perfect super-Cobra-back-bend image. Don't judge me on the crap-tastic-ness above. Thank you.