So back to where I left off… trying to find treatment now for my chronic pain.  At the time, knowing nothing about the spine and what could’ve been going on back there, all I knew was that I had pain in my right lower back, across the glute and down the thigh.

I couldn’t walk without extreme pain, and it was all that was on my mind.  I was working in Manhattan and all the walking on a daily basis was killing me.  It was affecting my job as all I thought about was the pain.

So not knowing any better, I found what looked to be a large chiropractic facility in midtown.  My first appointment gave me a lot of hope, as the dr seemed to fully understand exactly what I was explaining.  He told me we need to get things back into alignment and then let the body heal itself.  This would be done with 3 visits a week of back manipulations.

Seeing this “doctor”, and I put that in quotes because in my opinion, chiropractors mislead people into thinking they are finding a medical answer to their problems but in reality they all revolve around one thing… cracking your back.  Now some may have PT facilities attached and be very knowledgable about rehabilitation, but understand this – this chiro, not really understanding what was wrong yet, simply laid me on a table and began twisting and contorting me in to all sorts of different positions and cracking my back.  Exactly what is that doing?  Putting the spine in place?  Why are the same 4 or 5 back maneuvers performed on everyone regardless of their issues?  These are the answer to everything?  I don’t buy any of it.

Well, a back crack feels ok, the same way you crack your knuckles, it’s kind of fun.  Now you can do that everyday to the same knuckle, what does that do?  So after roughly 3mos of seeing this chiro, involving a painful midday walk to his office 3 times a week, I was no better off.  In fact, some times leaving his office I was worse off.  I believe he did further damage to my spine with all of this twisting and force just to get a crack or 2. 

So I had MRI’s and X-Rays, they were all negative.  I was getting desparate.  I decided to find another chiro.  This one came highly recommended and this is in Manhattan mind you, where some of the top dr’s in the country are located.  This man took one look at my MRI’s, for about 3 seconds, had nothing to say…laid me on a table and manipulated my back so forcefully I saw stars.  I did not return to him, in fact to this day he still has my MRI’s.

We’re about 4-5mos in now of excruciating back pain.  Mind you i’m roughly 26/27 at the time and the picture of health.  Muscular, no body fat, ripped abs… and I could barely walk.

Next I found a physical therapist, a very nice looking woman in midtown who had me to some exercises in front of her and proclaimed “you’re as strong as a horse”, and gave me some exerices to do.  I did them for a few weeks religiously with no improvement. 

By this time I was scouring the web for answers on a daily basis.  Thank god for the internet at that time..without it, I would never have been able to cover so much information so fast.  I was able to arrive at my own conclusion that I suffered from either piriformis syndrome or SI joint dysfunction.

I sought out a dr who specialized in the latter and found most of them were Osteopaths (skilled in treating the body as a whole) and/or sports medicine doctors.  Turns out, one was a few blocks away from where I worked.  I scheduled an appointment with them. 

In my next post, i’ll describe my first diagnosis of SI-Joint dysfunction, prolotherapy,  and ultimate back saving progress into my condition.

I’d also like to add, I am in no way endorsing or advertising any product or practice over another.  If chiro’s work for you great, if you are a chiro, good luck to you and your practice.  I am again simply describing my experience and I am not a doctor of any sort.