A lot has been said and written about how the “experts”
got things wrong about Covid. Experts
being wrong is not all that unusual. In
recent history the “experts” have been wrong about quite a few things. For over 100 years the experts have been saying
the world would soon run out of oil.
Eventually, we will…but it’s yet to happen “soon”. The experts gave us the “food pyramid” back in
the 1950’s and now the new experts are saying the old experts were wrong. In the early 20th century the
experts were confident that eugenics was the path to a better, healthier, more
intelligent human race. That path only
ended up in global war and genocide. For
over 100 years the experts have come up with various ideas on how to “fix” the Middle
East. Thus far they’ve only made it
worse. And I can remember when the experts
just knew it was bad for players to drink water during August two-a-day
football practices.
As one grows older one is likely to deal with a more “medical
experts”. Fortunately, they tend to be
right most of the time. Unfortunately,
when they are wrong it can really hurt.
A case in point, in the summer of 2022 I was having some pain in my
right hip. We were looking forward to a
trip to Italy in September, so I decided to go to my orthopedic doctor and get
it checked out. Maybe he could give me a
shot. Or perhaps he would tell me the
hip was arthritic and would most likely need to be replaced within a year or
two. I was prepared for the worst but
then got good news. After he X-rayed my hip, he concluded that I just had tight
hamstrings and glutes. So, he sent me to
another expert, a Physical Therapist, who gave me a stretching routine and some
tips on improving my posture. Go now and
be well.
Dutifully I did the stretching and worked on posture. My hip responded by getting worse. So, I doubled down on the stretching and good
posture discipline. My hip got worse and
soon my entire leg started to hurt. A week
before we were to leave for Italy I could no longer stand or walk for more than
5 minutes. So that trip was cancelled,
at no small expense.
I went back to my ortho doctor and he took X-rays of my
back this time and said there was a problem.
So, I ended up with a back and spine specialist. More X-rays and an MRI revealed a slipped
disc in my lower back along with stenosis. Serious but not necessarily serious enough to
justify surgery just yet. So back to the
Physical Therapist and some new exercises.
With rest and some light exercises there was improvement. We added more exercises and it immediately
got worse.
My wife criticizes me for going to the internet for
medical advice, but sometimes it pays off.
I discovered that one of the exercises the PT had me doing was exactly
what I should not be doing with a slipped disc.
So, I stopped going to the PT. I
continued with some of the other exercises avoiding the bad one or anything
that resembled the bad one and quickly got better.
For two years I’ve been ok and continued with the
stretching that the “experts”, including those on the internet, recommended. But recently after two weeks in Alaska, my hip
and leg began hurting again. So, I did
even more stretching of the leg and hip muscles. And it got worse.
Then I stumbled across another internet “expert”. Based on his information, it just confirmed
that this was sciatica caused by the back problem, even though my back did not
hurt. NO surprise there. But, to my surprise, this “expert” advised
that stretching the hamstring and hip muscles was a bad idea. The stretches might feel good in the moment,
but only served to irritate the sciatic nerve.
He advised a different routine focused more on strengthening the glutes
and lower abs. Within a week, my pain
eased up considerably and I am back on the road to recovery.
Bottom line, for over two years I have been doing what the
experts advised. And after some adjustments
I was doing ok, until I wasn’t. I’m
pretty sure some of our Alaskan adventures fired up the sciatica and all my
efforts to calm it down only made it worse. At some point I may need surgery to fix the
slipped disc. But for the time being I have
found a better way to deal with it. The
experts might know a lot about what has worked or could work, but remember they
can just as easily be wrong.
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