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If you anticipate needing Osteopathic Therapeutic Manipulation during your visit, please wear loose clothing

I haven’t been writing much for NaNoWriMo. Since Friday I’ve been dealing with a major headache, stabbing me right between my eye and temple, and then curling around behind my ear. Since Sunday I’ve been dealing with my neck getting stiff, so today I went to the doctor.

One of many reasons I love my doctor is that since he’s a D.O., he offered me muscle relaxants (apparently it’s tightness in my neck that’s causing my headaches, not the other way around) and offered to do OTM. Because of my liver issues (and other reasons), I opted to forgo the muscle relaxants. He said that if this didn’t work (and it might take a couple tries), we could always try medicine later.

He brought me nearly to tears pressing on this spot that recreated my headache, then popped my back and neck in ways that I never knew were possible. I’m half dreading, half eagerly ready for next week’s appointment. As he put it, “it hurts like a bitch,” but I think that I feel better now. It’s actually hard to tell. Between now and then, he showed me some new stretches and gave me a schedule for icing my neck and shoulder.

I think I’d have a hard time being a doctor and not be able to actually fix a person. I couldn’t be a radiologist (although I daydream about living across the planet and reading exams from my living room). I definitely could not be a pathologist. But if I had a chance to use my hands to actually fix something, not just see it and recognize it for what it is …

Maybe I’m just jaded (at 23? What?) and discouraged by a career in medical imaging. I feel like the most help I can do for anyone is getting an IV on the first try, calling ahead to the valet to get the patient’s car brought around before we get down to the door, or making sure to have plenty of warm blankets on hand for laying under and over the patient during the scan. Maybe I’m just feeling inadequate today because of issues I was having yesterday getting the radioactivity off my hands after being an idiot making point sources. But regardless, I don’t feel like I help anyone. I simply identify bad news. Sure, it’s not like their care ends there, but it’s all I get to see.

Anyway, my shoulder is not liking this typing thing. It’s kind of on fire and stuff. There was more I wanted to say, but it will have to wait.