a couple of years ago i had surgery on my lower back. although surgery is often not necessary, it was in my case. unless i wanted to be a depends-wearing cripple with a metal strap around my foot and no sexual function.
and, really, who wants that?
the surgery was very successful in that i don’t wear depends, don’t limp or have pain, and jamie jr. functions well. but i’ve realized over time that i need to look at the root cause of what caused my back trouble in the first place.
recently, prompted by what i thought was some unrelated shoulder pain, i had a deep-tissue sports massage. i’d had massages before, but nothing like this. pain? lemme tell ya. searing. barely tolerable. screaming into the pillow. but the guy (gary) clearly knew what he was doing–he works on professional and amateur athletes for a living.
as an aside, i asked him how the athletes tolerate it. he said they are pretty much used to it, but the deep-tissue work he does with them is more like a 9 or 10 on a scale of 10.
my massage? it’s a 3. three? jeebus. i don’t want to know from 9, if what i’m having is a 3.
anyway, my shoulder is much better now, and the concomitant benefit is that my lower back is much better as well. who knew that all that “knee bone connected to the hip bone” crap wasn’t crap?
i’m thinking now that a lot of my lower back problems were caused by upper back stuff that manifested elsewhere. because, even though it’s an hour of near-torture, that hour of massage gets me right for a full month. great stuff.
if you are in the new york city area, drop me a line and i’ll give you gary’s contact info.
it’ll be the best $100 you spend each month, too. a bargain at twice the price.
trust me on this.
