On my first visit with Dr. Pagano, who is my chiropractor based in Pennington, we covered a lot of ground. First, Dr. Pagano reviewed my x-rays with me, which were taken off site, but that's another story. He had a 3-d model of the spine and explained where my pain was coming from. It made a lot of sense... Then he answered my questions and began to explain how we were going to try and correct the issue. My sacrum was essentially out of whack! It actually looked tilted in the x-ray by about 5-7%. For those of you who don't know much about sacrums, it should be perfectly straight. I saw the tilt and wondered how much of a tilt would cause pain. So I asked. That's when Dr. Pagano placed two quarters on my arm and asked if I could feel the weight. I basically couldn't, but he said the pressure from the quarters alone would cause a decent amount of pain. Go ahead an try this at home and you'll see how little pressure is needed to cause back pain!
Then I had my first adjustment and I couldn't believe how my back was popping and cracking! After about 10 minutes of work, he asked me to get up. Keep in mind, I could barely get up out of a chair the day before. As I got up, I had almost no pain...my back felt loose...and I was amazed. He explained that my muscles needed to be retrained and that I would still feel pain as my back slightly shifts out of alignment (like it was in prior to my adjustment). The goal is to keep aligning and adjusting my back with the hope that my muscles begin to keep my spine and sacrum in alignment.
I left Dr. Pagano's office with almost no pain. I got home and was able to pick up my daughter as she ran down the hall to see me. This was truly amazing, given how bad my back hurt leading up to my visit. My back wasn't healed, but I felt as if I was on the right path, especially with a chiropractor as good as Vito Pagano!
More to come...
The Patient
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