Sorry for long post. Hope you guys are not offended by OT. I thought somebody on here might have input on this. Hey, it's about music. I can't play my guitar! Actually, it's getting better, I can play some now.

Over a year ago, I tripped and fell carrying DonM's heavy Roland keyboard from a gig and sailed out the door into a Cadillac, speared it with my head, more or less. End result is a whiplash injury, maybe a slight concussion. It took it several weeks but I finally got over the sore neck.

Didn't think anything about it until a couple of months ago and horrendous pain set in. I thought I was having a heart attack, but the ER trip showed no heart problems. We finally discussed the old neck injury but the docs went past that and diagnosed it as my shoulder, a muscular pain, not the neck. (I had rotator cuff surgery on that shoulder ten years ago and I was having unbearable pain in my left shoulder at this recent ER visit.) I wasn't too impressed with the doc's diagnosis and elected to go to a chiropractor and have him check me out. I figured it sounded like a chiropractor might help this, worth a try.

Chiropractor said he knew what was wrong with me even before an x-ray. When he got the x-ray, he said Yep, just as I thought... a classic case if I've ever seen one. Your neck vertebrae are crooked (my words). He showed me on the x-ray and what he said sure looked correct. He said it's impinging on the nerve, which radiates down my left side. I had told him of the unbearable pain which started in my left chest, went to my left shoulder and that my upper arm around my elbow was numb, as were my left index finger and middle finger. He said, this one's easy for diagnosis... damage at the C5 vertebrae (not sure of the number but that's close.)

So, he was confident he could fix it. Said that the neck is compressed and we have to decompress it. Seemed reasonable to me. He said, two to six weeks.

So, I started going four days/week for the first two weeks, then 2x/week, and now 1x/week. I am much better, most of the pain is gone, but not the finger numbness. I can feel the guitar strings better now. But, I am still screwed up. I can turn a certain way and get bad pain and it's just not right.

My reason for writing is... it doesn't make sense to me that he could fix me the way he is going and I look at most any doctor with a wary eye. I like the guy and he seems competent but I don't understand. My therapy, thus far, has been that he "adjusts me" with the hands on thing, cracking my neck and shoulder and back. Then, they put electrodes on my neck, my shoulder and the top side of my arm around my elbow. A current then runs through there for 15 minutes and it kind of makes your muscles jump. Then, an ultra-sound treatment for a few minutes where my neck joins my left shoulder. So, I got relief from all of this.

Only one time... this was after maybe three weeks of treatment... did they put me in "traction." That is where you lie on a table and he puts a strap around your head and the machine then pulls backwards and down with something like 24 lbs. of weight. It gently increases the angle for the 12 minutes or so you are on the machine. Now, this is the therapy that was described to me that would decompress the neck vertebrae. Made sense to me.

Now, when I did the traction thing, I damn near died. It was all I could do to tough it out without crying for somebody to get me off this damn thing. Wow, I was squirming. With major pain! I toughed it out and told him that sucker was painful!

I haven't done it since and at one point, I thought we were to start it again, according to what he said, but he said "You're doing well, let's keep going like we're going."

So, I am wondering what is going on here. How could this other therapy possibly cure me? I know that a patient that goes back 1x to 2x a week is a gravy train for a doc. I am suspicious but don't know if it's warranted.

Anyone got an opinion?

I know a guy who had a similar injury and he confirmed that it is unbearable pain (he is ex-NFL linebacker), and his reared its ugly head 30 years after his head-cracking injury. They fixed his with surgery. I don't want surgery if at all possible.

GET A SECOND OPINION...NOW.

Bill,

My family and I swear by our Chiropractor. I also have a compressed disk in my neck from an injury which I received when I was 19. When I play the drums a lot, I get severe neck pain and also get tingling in my fingertips. He puts me on a machine that moves back and forth and he puts my head in a sling and as the table moves back and forth, my body goes one way and my head remains stationary. I don't feel any pain during this, just slight pulling. However, this treatment relieves the pain and reduces the tingling. The more treatments you get the better your neck will respond.

We have countless other maladies in my family that the Chiro helped with including my wife, who was told to have back surgery 10 years ago, but I told her to see the Chiro. She has been pain free since as long as she goes for periodic adjustments.

I highly recommend the treatments; stick with it.

I didn't make myself clear.

I am saying that the treatment where he said he would decompress the neck by putting me on such a machine... this makes sense to me. And that by NOT doing this therapy, even though I am much better with the other therapies, will not work to cure me. I am questioning WHY he is not having me do that machine, even though the first treatment was painful as hell. I am wondering if he is being honest with me or does he just see the gravy train of me coming in there for weeks on end to get these OTHER therapies.

Now that I am much better with the pain, I assume I could tolerate the traction machine.

I am wondering if I can trust this D.C., as the only therapy that makes sense to decompress the vertebrae is that particular machine which supposedly does just that. This other stuff is just treating the nerves where certain branches end. To my layman's brain, that doesn't do anything to actually fix the problem, which is compressed vertebrae impinging on the nerve going to my left arm.

Bill,

I really don't want to go into this on the site, therefore, I'll give you a call.

Gary

I agree Gary not the place to discuss this.

He didn't mean it was inappropriate to discuss it here, he meant he didn't want to give his opinion publicly.

Anyone else?

Bill,

I still remember you playing guitar behind me at one of Don's jams. You were telling me the chord changes. That was a fun jam.

Now on to the subject, the jury is still out on DC. You might want to check out quackwatch.com. They have their view of Chiro and you can tell by the website name it is not favorable. Other people swear by them. I guess it is results that count. If you are getting better and feel it is because of the treatments then by all means continue. My own personal opinion is that Chiro is of limited benefit but sometimes helps. I would get an MD's second opinion if it were me.

Don owes you big time, make him pay!

Tom