johnpalmer

I was writing this as data for a doctor, to help keep me from dying.
Then I realized that it might be ready to share.

If you don't know this already, I have pain that can mimic any symptom of a focal seizure,including having my brain be essentially wiped clean as can be, making any reading, writing, or other existing I do pointless. So: What do I tell a doctor, to hope I get properly treated? 

My seizure level events can destroy my awareness and sense of self, and leave me feeling like a sandblasted brain in a jar, including a loss of all awareness. They never lead to a loss of consciousness, but, there’s another issue in my body that occurs as well.

My hips are really twisted together, so much so, that I expect vasovagal symptoms to happen occasionally. (After all, they happen. Why look for another explanation, until this one doesn’t serve?) I assume, when my hips are in a bad spasm, they could occlude the major veins returning blood to my heart, leading to underfill, leading to a spike in blood pressure (to keep blood in the cranium) – temporary POTS. Occasionally, I have had my hips spasm, such that, along with the seizure-like symptoms, I was experiencing uncontrolled clonic activity, with intermittent loss of consciousness. The way these events usually end, is, my awareness returns enough that I know what’s happening, and I leap to my feet, literally. This forces me to utilize all of my leg muscles in a particular fashion, and always – every single time! – restores normal, continued, consciousness, as I end the inner-hip muscle spasm, by seizing (ahem) them with my outer  hip muscles. Two takeaways: if you watched me, you’d think I could have had a tonic clonic seizure; AND, all of the symptoms are explained better my minor dislocations, neurological pain, and a body’s desire to unconsciously undo minor dislocations, so that’s officially “a thing,” now.

I know that pregabalin, which helps gaba, also helps these seizure like events. I know that alcohol, which helps gaba in small doses, helps these seizure like events, and remember, before you tell me “you drink too much alcohol, Mr. Palmer,” you’re talking to the equivalent of a seizure patient who started drinking because the seizures were killing him, and he didn’t know to go to a doctor for anti-seizure meds. Now I’m going to a doctor, and, I’m trying to stop alcohol, but, remember: my problem is not an addiction to alcohol, nor is it “substance use disorder,” what it is, is uncontrolled pain, that alcohol helps. Get rid of the pain, the alcohol use goes away, because damn, I know my body needs a break. I just need to be alive, when it finally gets its break, to prevent that break from being eternal.

I believe anti-seizure meds are the best solution to uncontrolled neurological pain, resulting in seizure-like symptoms, because, duh, “seizure medication, seizure symptoms, one might help the other, and it should be studied.” But no one has studied it yet. I’m your patient-0. Because I’m your patient-0, I’m weird about wanting to live. I’m in pain that would kill people, because sometimes, death would be better than what I go through, and remember: it’s what I go through EVERY WAKING HOUR. This isn’t a “mental health” issue, me being suicidal sometimes, it’s uncontrolled pain. And the events might as well be a seizure, for all the disruption it causes to my life, so I deserve pain relief the same way a seizure patient deserves relief. I don’t need a psych consult.

ANYWAY: today, I want to live; that’s a massive change in outlook. If you’ve never been suicidal, you simply can’t comprehend what a difference it is, to want to see tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Two things coincided with that. First: since the most common gaba-affecting medication was an “anti-anxiety” medication (Xanax, and its more famous cousin, Valium), and, since I had Buspar, an anti-anxiety med they give because benzos feel too good, I felt I’d try that. Buspar affects two pathways with its effects: pain, and mood. My two worst symptoms are excruciating neurological pain, blowing my brain up like a seizure, and, constant mood crashes. Taking 60mg starting on Buspar (I was dying – you don’t bring a bucket to a fire, you bring a hose) coincided with a reduction in perceived suffering. The Buspar probably helped; it should have helped, somewhat. But I fear that the real help was, I’ve finally “unwound” all the joints that were causing my most extreme pain. Again, I’m sure I’d have gotten some help with Buspar, but, I can’t prove I did, and the pain is too extreme for half-measures. As a “hail mary” attempt at something that might work, it was the best hail mary since discovering I had low testosterone, and I plugged a real, physical, deficiency.

What I really wish had happened was, I got an EEG, triggered my pain, and we watched what happened. Maybe we can’t do that – maybe most people can trigger an EEG if they really try hard! But my 2-day EEG is scheduled such that I’m literally afraid I’ll be well, before the start of day 1. With proof that I have “enough of a seizure” that I’m allowed to try  a tiny dose of Xanax, I would know how a fast acting benzo might save the life of someone like me. Maybe it wouldn’t help. But here’s something to consider.

I think a lot of people are “like me,” insofar as they might have neurological pain. I know neurological pain can present as a bad mood, or, it can aggravate a bad mood, and break your boundaries, so, now, you’re thinking of hitting someone you love, and you might be appalled by that image, but, it might pop up. Why? Well, first, neurological pain says “do something! It’s urgent!” and that makes you antsy, you see? You look for what’s wrong, and that’s why you might think “I want to slap them… just once!” because you’re so, so, frustrated, and the neurological pain turns it from something you’d say in exasperation, into something you can picture doing.

So: depressed people might be in neurological pain, and don’t ask my opinion on ECT, given that we’re likely blasting the brains of people in extreme pain with electricity, rather than maybe giving them a medication that alleviates their pain!

Ahem. But my control of my anger means I know if my brain presents an image of hitting someone, and it’s not BDSM play (sorry, kids, that’s an “ask your parents”), it’s just the pain speaking. It’s not me. It’s not that I’m evil. But not everyone knows it’s pain. Someone, in anger management right now, is in tears, because they’re doing the work, they’re doing it all, they even started spiritual practices they don’t believe in, just in case they helped, but the images, those horrible images, they keep coming back. Fun fact: if you try *not* to see yourself hitting someone you love, you’re more likely to see it, as a result of neurological pain. It’s like, you have to keep checking, “am I seeing me with a child and a belt?” and, your brain flashes the image, like it was saying “that’s right boss! I remember what not to show you! Oh… right! You don’t want to see this!” I’m making the exchange more humorous, but, honest to goodness, from the inside of my own brain, I see it happen. If you attain peace, that it’s just the pain talking, then… look.

You can’t “attain peace” to make the images go away. If you try to do that, you’re still thinking of the images. You need real peace, real guilt-free, “I’m not a terrible person if my brain burps a bad idea into my head. I don’t care who says otherwise, because: it’s always okay to be me, when being ‘me’ doesn’t hurt anyone.” That kind of peace, and you don’t see the images as often. They’re no longer important to you, and if they flash up, you’ll distract yourself, is all, until the pain goes away, just like a headache.

Depression, and anger/rage. Pain can cause lack of sleep, which can bring on hypomania. Pain can also cause the emotional state known as “ecstasy” – you are in an ecstatic state, like a native American who had leather straps hanging them by their skin, so they were in hella pain for hours, and, in self-defense, the brain detaches from ordinary reality. It’s not like the party drug, m’kay? You can get really weird. Me, I’m like a vision of a good pope, who wants to bless any who request it, to share food with the hungry, drink with the thirsty, comfort for the afflicted, you know the drill. A perfect Catholic boy’s image of heroic holiness. But I’ll SAY it, see? And I’ll smile beatifically at you if you agree that love is so much better than hate or indifference, it’s so REWARDING. Note the lack of danger to self, or others. I’m just a harmless weirdo, but, my behavior is clearly “aberrant” which is to say, civilly liable to be jailed and drugged away. Yay, America, home of the free.

Hypomania, or, ecstasy that’s misidentified, can be diagnosed as “mania.” What does mania mean? It means you’re permanently bipolar, no one can ever say otherwise. Seriously, check DSM-5. It’s not supposed to be used, to condemn you as a crazy bipolar (expletive_deleted), of course; it’s supposed to mean “it’s okay, you can get mood stabilizers, because you had one manic episode, so I can diagnose them in good conscience. You don’t have to take them, but a lot of people like you love the meds, so maybe give them a fair try?” We now have bipolar disorder, flawlessly mimicked by neurological pain.

Finally, if you haven’t had good, refreshing sleep, you can have hallucinations, that have nothing to do with an organic brain disorder, but, you might be tagged “schizophrenic,” and, if you were accosted, by cops, because you were annoying people, (as hallucinating people do…), you might have resisted their investigation, making you a violent crazy person, forever more. Maybe the merciful judge will shed a tear, and order another 90 day dose of dumbsville for you.

Anyone NOT having nightmares, there’s the door – I kid, but, if this isn’t nightmare fuel for you, what *is*? Now: think about this. Valium was amazingly popular, and addictive, and, overprescribed, but: so too was “vibrator therapy,” to get a “hysterical” woman to have orgasms. Orgasms improve life, hence, women wanted more. So what was Valium?

Was Valium an orgasm, in a sad woman’s life, and it made her feel so, so nice, that she naturally wanted more? If so, that’s a worrisome sign of addiction potential. Or… or did Valium alleviate a lot of neurological pain, and, also feel good? I don’t know. My brain goes aphasic, so I can’t read and write for very long, my brain craps out too quickly, then has a seizure-like event so I forget all my just-acquired knowledge, so I can’t research the literature. Ironic I might need “Valium” (or a drug in its class) to learn about Valium. Because I want to present the idea that Valium might have been a miracle, for the right women, but we didn’t know the difference between being a stressed mom who nearly strangles the kids, figuratively, and someone with a severe neurological pain disorder who needs to learn “it’s just the pain talking, the children aren’t being evil demons, and I’m not a bad person because of brain burps.” And also needs pain relief desperately.

I’m sure the reason I’m in pain is, I have a syndrome I’ve invented, Twisted Body Syndrome, or TBS, and, I say that causes the neurological pain, automatically. I can explain it, and I hope my explanation tests out as correct, so, yes, we need research. Still, my goal is, if you’re twisted up, and ask for pain meds (which may be benzos!), we need to remember that drug laws are to preserve and protect human lives, not deny lifesaving pain relief to suffering patients.

And we need to take another look at properly prescribed benzos. Maybe they won’t work! But damn, I know that’s why I won’t get a prescription – no proven seizure. And just a few tablets of Xanax would tell me a lot about TBS and my pain, and, damn it all, I’m going to live, so it’s not as big a deal for me, but other people are dying, and need to know! Maybe only really awful anti-seizure meds will alleviate neuro pain, okay, maybe it’ll be something far less pleasant than benzos. Regardless, I sure would have liked to have known this, 16 years ago, when I had 16 years of unspeakable agony ahead of me.

“Awful meds” become awfully nice when they give you a life worth surviving for. Trust me, I know the difference between a life worth surviving for, and one that, well, isn’t. Survival is so much work, and if all you have is unending pain… why work so hard? Especially when the pain makes surviving so hard?  Those are real, cold, hard, thoughts people like me have, as we contemplate the suicide plan, so, I’m really talking about a need for literal, lifesaving, pain relief.

Today, no one cares, yet; we’re not even trying to help people like me. That has to change. Anything else should be unthinkable. Neurological pain must be identified, and treated; there are few civil rights issues that rise to this level of importance or higher. We need to end “Stand Your Ground,” laws, obviously, because it eliminates a person’s “right to stay alive” in the face of someone else who can claim they were terrified of the corpse, before they made it a corpse. Still there are more people in severe neurological pain than will be killed by bigots. So, again: ending Stand Your Ground ends an unconstitutional abomination, but, I don’t think it’ll save as many lives as proper identification and treatment of neurological pain.

 

Neurological Pain and the Problem with Time

For many years, everything in my body hurt, a bit, all the time. That made just sitting still intensely uncomfortable, so I needed to distract myself from the pain. I’d try to do something immersive enough that mere existence didn’t cause me agony, and, of course, because of “ADHD,” I would fail to notice the time until the last moment.

Well, no. See, one way to deal with any form of pain is to distract yourself. If you throw yourself into something really deeply, then, you’re ignoring little pains, like, that tiny ache because you’ve been in one position too long, the bladder’s mild-to-medium urgings, etc., and I was, in fact, trying to hyperfocus on something, because otherwise the background pain of just existing was too high.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I don’t have ADHD, but, I think we may someday have ADHD and ADHPD, to name the latter a “pain” disorder, or, one in which pain makes a significant contribution.  This could greatly assist caregivers in determining what symptoms are pain, and therefore need pain relief, and which are focus, and need stimulant or other focusing agents.

In a similar vein, I remember once thinking that it would be almost good to get a spanking on Christmas Eve, so you had that blackout period where you didn’t realize time was passing. Why? Well, a spanking produces endorphins, which are natural pain relievers, and will reduce all pains one feels. I will mention my kink is probably due to my neurological pain, and, others who suffer may find similar comforts if they wish. But my real point is, don’t wallop your kid, just because they’re in pain, and can’t handle the passage of time.  So what could you do? I don’t know. Maybe a relative could have suggested a Christmas Eve tickle fight (with adults making sure children don’t get mean!), and that, also, would have stimulated me, and gotten me past my pain and foul mood. Maybe (especially for very young) children who love all kinds of physical attention, however goofy or  treacly it may appear to the childless,  you could give them a good session, to see if that winds them down. (I assume older children will hit that “I’m too old for that!” stage.)

Speaking of foul moods, I just realized that some folks don’t know that the flash of fury they feel when some appliance misbehaves is probably neurological pain, expressing itself as anger, and it feels like the proverbial kick in the nuts. (Don’t you dare crush my cashews!) Ahem. Anyway. That’s not real anger, in the sense of “I saw X and was angry,” though it’s entirely real, in the sense of “but I felt real anger!” because you sure as hell did. And if you can learn to catch that pain response, you can snuff out fury before it’s begging for kindling.

When I was very young, I learned that it was naughty to go “eeee-erruguf!” because your arm got stuck in your coat, and you felt a big flash of pain. And I think this really encapsulates the horrors of my childhood. Everyone knew it was okay to make a noise if you were in pain… unless you weren’t allowed to. And the rules for weren’t allowed to seemed made up on the spot! But the real problem was, children shouldn’t give that much voice to mere frustration, and learn to use their inside voices, even for pain, and to ask for help, to extricate one’s self, if needed. So my naughtiness was based on a sick lie; I was not in pain, because no one with an MD after their name said I was in pain.  You know what’s a lot of fun, when you’re a child dealing with accusations of misbehavior? When your pain gets so bad, you become aphasic, and literally lose your words. You can’t think of how to say “but s/he pushed me first!” as an example of then-unspeakable injustice, and it’s hugely frustrating for someone who hasn’t developed master levels of frustration tolerance first.

Anyway: if you wanted a good reason to suspect you might have neurological pain, you’ve learned to ignore, that would be one thing. You might hate wasting time. If so, try to feel your body, take a deep breath to see if mindfulness helps, and ask yourself “what hurts?” and you may get an answer. If so – great! That’s step one. Remember, don’t start unwinding until you have good social and palliative support, at least. Your problem might not require unwinding – I know a lot of soldiers have both PTSD and neurological pain,

Edited to clarify that some things appear treacly to the childless, not the childish. Sorry, aphasia ruins a lot!!!

All right, I have this hopefully amazing news I want to share, and I’ve spent the past two days writing furiously to try to explain it. That means I’ve been able to write for most of
TWO
WHOLE
DAYS!!! And that’s not normal for me. Normally, “two whole quarter hours” is a good reading/writing stint, then, potentially, be exhausted the rest of the day.

I now call my disorder “Twisted Body Syndrome” or TBS, and, it’s called that for the obvious reason; the body isn’t merely “subluxated,” it looks like someone was yanking on bits all over. Well, when that happens, the fascia can remember where the bones used to be, and it has two pain modes.

The first is a prompting ache-style pain, where you feel funny in an arm or leg, shake it out, feel a click/pop, and feel much better, that’s the pain, from beginning to end. We know this is urgent, because not only do we wildly shake an arm, we sometimes see other people do it, with pained expressions on their faces. Still, that’s a kind-of ordinary pain.

The other kind of pain I believe the fascia transmits is dislocation pain, and this is the stuff that can cause pseudo-seizures, or maybe real seizures. They can cause loss of awareness, so you can’t remember what happened while you’re in that much pain. They can cause hallucinations, traumatic memories, and emotional crashes. And some people are living with that, 24x7x365, because fascia pain doesn’t create inflammation markers, so doctors aren’t sure it’s even there. But the pain is real, and it is there, and this is what I believe breaks my brain, because it’s saying “DUDE! Our body is being ripped apart!” (That is what a dislocation is, after all.)

Someday, subluxation will be proof enough, but we’re not there yet. Well, for many years, I’ve been trying to “unwind” my twisted body. Over the past week, I’ve gone from “near constant pseudo seizures (pseizures?), every waking hour” to “I have aches, and if I apply pressure to an achy spot, it hurts worse. If I really want to, I can evoke enough pain to make it feel like a seizure, but… now we’re into the realm of the old joke, “Doc, it hurts when I do this (strikes pose).” “Then don’t do that!” replies the doctor, because, for the joke, the pose is always silly and awkward.

What this means, is, following the movement urges of your body can, or may, bring you relief. Hopefully, any form of skeletal straightening, like rolfing or chiro or other forms of bodywork, will alleviate the suffering.

What’s the bad news? Well, it would have been nice if someone had tried to alleviate my pain with something other than frickin’ antidepressants, ahem, but, we lost the window to do that, so we have no idea what might be a good neuro pain blocker for the fascia. Still, I think I’m going to live.

And I feel so confident about this that I feel an urge to publish it, now, now, now, in case a meteor strikes, because I feel like this could be big. There could be millions, or even tens of millions of people suffering from partial dislocations, but they can't realize it's pain, because they've been ignoring it for so long. Alleviating all that pain... who could ask for anything more?

So maybe I'm also feeling some irrational exuberance because I'm feeling so much better than I did a week ago :-)
 

You’re all so terrifying, with so much power, to hurt me in so many ways, without even meaning to, even when you don’t want to, and you can’t understand what to and I can’t even speak to explain myself, of course I have to stay isolated. Alone. Afraid. But safe. For now.

Milli once asked me to contemplate, what if I never get better. I told her it wasn’t time to contemplate that, and she didn’t understand why. Helpful hint, if you’re ever in that situation: it means “I don’t see any way to survive, and I’ve survived a lot, if I were to discover I had no hope for relief.”

I live for you, I love you, I want to be with you and love and laugh and dance and instead all I can do is watch a horrible, needy, world pass me by, second by second. 

Vocabulary gets strange when you’re dealing with a medical disorder you’re trying to invent. I want the words I choose to be words that will fit, hopefully, even in transliteration, to the extent that it’s possible. And yet, there are words that doctors will use that warp all ordinary meaning. One applies underarm deodorant “axially,” one puts something in one’s cheek, next to the lower gum, “buccally.”  Doctors could muck up a Nerf ball fight.

One thing that I think helps one’s thought processes (and the resulting vocabulary) is to recognize models. I have a model, that’s what my “medical disorder I’m trying to invent,” is properly called. The fascia writes traces of subluxation/malalignment as they happen, and then act to undo the damage, or create a stable point. It creates a stable point, by binding range of motion, so, I call the places where things feel stuck a “binding” but the places where it feels “sticky,” I call those “traces.” The fascia writes traces, so that you may undo them – peel them apart, unstick them, unglue them, later.

In my model, the fascia tries to keep the spine straight (the spine must not kink!), and, tries to balance quadrants of your body. So I feel there’s some left/right, and some upper/lower, balancing going on. The reason I think this happens, is, I think it leaves the “homunculus” in the best, most usable, shape.

In my model, our brains don’t send signals directly to muscle; they send them to the fascia, using an interface I call the homunculus, which translates them into muscle movements. I think this is true for two reasons. First, when the fascia undoing a trace, or breaks a binding, there’s a huge amount of sensation. That makes me feel a lot of information is going brainward – “modify the homunculus!” Then, imagine you want to extend, bend, twist, and extend again – forget which specific extremities you’re doing this to, because, that’s a lot of precise muscle movements, by muscles that are not where they are, normally. How could your brain track all the specific muscles you need to perform an action, when there’s other information in play, like, gravity, how you’re twisted, which limbs are extended, how far, and, what’s bent?

For me, it made sense that the fascia was likely a living, analog, computer that made those decisions for you, because it’s what’s right there. Other reasons it makes sense, is, while I’m walking, if the fascia shifts, I stumble – no problem with my brain, just with the fascia. The homunculus altered, mid-step, causing a stumble. There’s more, I have years of lived experience. That said: this isn’t my strongest, most important claim.

I was told that I was “too sensitive” to my fascia, and the problem was called “fibromyalgia.” I think the doctor was full of crap. I think my body is all twisted up, and untwisting, and the sensations of that are so overwhelming that it warps my brain.

I think lots of people have similar problems. They might think they, instead, have a host of physical or psychiatric issues, but the problem is just, we don’t have a word for “my fascia is signaling that something is wrong.”  Unless we’re Peter Parker, in which case, our fascia might also host the Spider-sense. “Tingling,” (Spider-man’s usual danger sense signal) is not a bad word for the fascia doing something it (normally) shouldn’t.

The most important part of my model is this: I’ve lived in a body where I first learned that neurological pain could warp my brain in ways I never could have believed. I now have learned, by evoking that very pain, how neurological pain can be a sneaky enemy, that presents as purely psychological or emotional issue at times. Further, if neurological pain is bad, it can mimic certain psychiatric disorders – treat the pain, the disorder will improve, and maybe vanish. Neurological pain can cause a host of other neurological effects, including vasovagal effects (possible fainting) as well as chills, hot flashes, and more.

We need to talk about this. But to talk about  my problems, we need some vocabulary. I’ll try to add to this post, if it seems we need  more terms.

My hypothesis leans heavily into the idea that something in the body (probably the fascia) records the changes made by injury. That means if we had a medical device that could scan the fascia the right way, we might be able to determine precisely how to help a person, if they suffer severe subluxation. 

If I were correct, and, someone were to figure out how to scan the fascia, and then use bone-settling[sic] techniques to repair the injury as quickly as possible, it would be a huge advance in medicine, plus a license to print money... assuming as many people are as miserable, as I believe there are.

What I'm going through is so intense, it complicates so much else in my life, so, even if I have a metric boatload of problems (10% bigger than a standard boatload, and much, much, larger than a "buttload") when I'm done with all the crazy fascia crap, it can't help but make my life multiple metric boatloads better.

So, six days ago, I "stopped drinking," by which I mean, I would no longer use alcohol as a life-extending tool. My doctor says I shouldn't drink so much, and I say I shouldn't (description of suicide, elided), but the alcohol prevents that.

Here's the thing: the pain is killing me. I spend all day, every day, every waking hour, in agony. It's been that way all of my life. I can make it "better" but I can't make it "okay." For the past year or so, pelvic pain has been so bad, the best I can get out of sex is a prostate sneeze, and that, my friends, is the highlight of my arbitrary period of time - a few moments of perfect, pleasant, restful, quiet in my brain.

My day is spent on the couch or in the bed, struggling with pains that include seizures, or mimic them, and no medical practitioner understands. If I "want to die," it's suicidality, not "exhaustion after 50+ years of being in constant pain, and finally understanding why it's not getting better."

You want to know the scariest movie I ever saw? "A Few Good Men." See, I would have been the Marine who kept falling behind in runs, and everyone thought was lazy, because there were no physical signs pointing to an objective problem that said "of course this poor bastard can't handle that level of activity without mental collapse caused by currently invisible issues!" And then to think that the bully who refused to bend, even if it killed one of his troops (one of the people he was tasked with protecting!!!) would be defended, even to the point of a man killing himself so as not to have to testify... that's a nightmare. No one would care that "I" died. The important thing is protecting the Marine who was responsible for my death. That is terrifying.

People like me, we're always aware that we can be arrested, or killed, for the crime of being a Big Scary Man Who Isn't Acting Normally, because we probably hurt someone (no one's sure how, and no one's sure who...). It happens. People who are raging, or struggling to mumble to themselves using their indoor voice, people who hear a cop's command, and are so terrified or angry their brain blows up entirely, as if they were seizing, these people look "dangerous," and in today's America, no one thinks of de-escalation, they only think of ending the threat, quickly, and safely. This usually means "shooting the person scaring people." Or choking him for 10 minutes, and getting acquitted of killing him. It's "safe," you see, so long as you don't consider the scary person an actual human being who is being harmed. Since they often end up a corpse, I suppose that's just predictive morality?

I’ve mentioned that the fascia is like a flexible, slightly stretchable, underskin suit packed with sensory nerves. I think that its purpose is to provide our motion-and-position senses, provide for our negative feedback, and control what muscles act, when.

My reasoning: I realized humans understand circular/spiral motion, and, they understand straight-line motion.  You can draw a roughly straight line with any of your limbs; you can move most of your extremities in a circular motion (e.g., fingers, but probably not toes). The tangles in my body all feel similarly – either in a straight line along the bone path, or, tangled up in loops.

In the beginning, I could only mobilize part of my right hip, but I kept struggling, and, eventually, more of my body started unwinding (and, my pain shot up immeasurably). I started to notice, sometimes, when I was unwinding, it felt like muscles were changing control over parts of my body. Sometimes, it feels like the wrong muscles are saying “we used to hurt but… ahhhhhhh” and the right muscles are saying “nice job, guys, we’ll take over now.” Okay, I’m being a bit more expressive, but, only a bit. It felt that natural.

So I thought my muscles were tangled up for a while, but that’s silly. Muscles must follow bones. And yet, sometimes, it felt like individual muscle fibers might be getting pulled loose, so, again, “my muscles feel tangled up.” 

Muscles can’t tangle up; there’s no mechanism for them to form adhesions. But the fascia forms adhesions. And if the fascia controlled which muscles were in control, and the fascia was tangled, I’d feel my muscles were tangled. Et viola, I say, looking for a musical instrument I’ll never find, it must be the fascia causing the issue… or, Occam would tell us we’re numbskulls to assume it’s “something else we haven’t seen evidence for, yet.”

The thing is, fascia bindings limit your range of motion, so, you can’t always undo a binding in place. One time I tried, and I felt a pain like a match lighting, and immediately stopped what I was doing. That “match lighting” pain is a serious warning – I’d only ever heard of it before, but I knew what I was feeling, from that warning! So it feels like I have to follow the tangles, and, if tangles are on top of tangles, I have to handle the top tangles first.

The net effect of these tangles is “subluxation.” Your joints don’t rest in the correct “neutral” position. So, how do you move? Well, you know how to move a bipedal person (assuming you are bipedal, perhaps with mechanical assistance), so you send commands, like, sit, stand, walk, run, jump, and those impulses are translated by the fascia to the right muscles. If you’re not subluxated, those impulses are worked by the correct muscles. If not, they’re worked by the closest straight-line-and-looping muscles the body can use to perform the action.

All of this is frightfully complicated, right? Well, the fascia must also provide for negative feedback, if it decides what muscles are worked. Each muscle must move with a corresponding inhibitory muscle action. That’s what negative feedback is, when you start to lift something, the muscles to drop your load are engaged, for stability, and they all adjust at the same time. What mechanism could provide for that? The human brain, unassisted? I don’t think so – I could be wrong, but I think it offloads that task to the fascia. Similarly, I assume that positional and movement senses are handled by the fascia as well.

I could be wrong about this. I’ve been wrong, and I can admit it. Like, last time, I thought I’d made a mistake? Yeah, remember that? I was wrong, I hadn’t made a mistake after all, and here I am, admitting I was wrong, see what a big man I am? Ahem.

More seriously: Occam’s razor, and my personal experience, strongly support this idea. And what it means is, if you have addictions issues, if you have mental health issues  (most especially including substance use issues), if you have chronic pain, if you’re just miserable all the time, ask a chiropractor to give you a check, and they’ll tell you you’re subluxated. Okay, but, they’re going to point to your spine. “We’ll move your spine, even if it’s your shoulder that’s pulling your spine out of proper spinal alignment.” That worries me. I feel like the shoulder is where we should be working.

Problem: PT, and doctors of osteopathy, they don’t think subluxation means anything. Well, chiropractors will say, if your child has asthma, your child is “subluxated, no question,” because I saw one do that, so, subluxation has become a bit of a dirty word. I don’t think my doctor believes that my hip doesn’t move normally, due to subluxation. I know PTs will tell me that I’m lying about my own body, because they can’t believe my body won’t supply truss (keeping me up) in certain positions. Sometimes, they’re asking me to do something that a normal person could do, because the median femur is perpendicular to the ground. I can’t, because in that pose, my femur is at, like, a 75 degree angle. Ever tried to build anything without something a lot closer to 90? You won’t have truss – you can’t span a space. The weight going down will also push sideways, and you’ll have a collapse. Point and laugh at the gimp, Mr. PT firstname lastname.

What if you’re in neurological pain, and a chiro examines you, and points to subluxation… what then? Well, first up, a warning: it is now a common practice in chiropracty to ask for all funds up front. Your insurance pays so much, our course of treatment costs this much, cut us a check, before we start treatment. I talked to a chiropractor, before I knew this, and I walked out, because I don’t pay up front. I assumed it was a con. But it is now a common practice in the industry, such as there’s an industry.

Why would they ask for it all up front? Well, when I’m unwinding – which is what chiropractic work will do, if I’m right, and chiros are partly right – I have a lot of pain, and, I have a lot of other distress. Wanna know the winner of the annual “worse than it sounds, and it sounds awful” contest? Spontaneous projectile vomiting! I was on a customer call at the time, but damn, I’m good with the MUTE button!!! Look up vagus nerve issues, look up focal seizures, think all GI issues and get some protective undergarments, just in case, because your body can do the same thing as projectile vomiting from the other… okay, you got the idea. Think of all that, and now, you have an idea of the neuro effects one might experience. They would want the money up front, so, they could say “John, please continue; you paid for it, you might as well see it through.” And why all up front? Because my experience suggests (to me) that you might be miserable all the way up until all of your joints are free of subluxation, with concomitant lack of spine subluxation.

Er, that is, I think my spine is out of place, because my hip is stuck in the wrong “neutral” position. I want to fix the hip, because it feels in my head like I don’t want to have the spine pressing against the strength of the hip. That feels wrong to me. I could be wrong. But I also kind of… look, I felt no “call of destiny,” okay? I just had this sense, “I can fix this myself.” And I’ve been wrong, a good many times, over the years, but I’m getting closer to the “fix” I imagine exists. That much, I’m sure of.

I’m in a lot of pain,  and my only escape any more is medical marijuana concentrates, and mindfulness exercises. Don’t get me wrong: during mindfulness exercises, I still feel the pain, I still lose the day, I still can’t clean the kitchen, have sex with my wife, go out of the house, etc., but, during the mindfulness exercises, I see why Buddhist monks can handle suffering. I had something sounding a tone, every fifteen seconds. I said to myself, “if I go mindful, I’ll hear that delightful little ‘doot’ as a complete surprise, and it might make me giggle, instead of tense up,” and sure as shooting, that’s what happened.

I told y’all I was a professional weirdo!

This post may be edited at a later time – apologies for the inconvenience

This Dreamwidth Journal is a NO HATRED zone.

You want to hate on me, I might allow it, I might not. You hate on someone else, you’re gone.

You can’t be a “Trump supporter” and it’s nearly impossible to be a “Republican,” and be free of hate. Look, if “the Democrats would be worse,” wasn’t irrational, why are we stuck in a Middle Eastern war? Okay, and, when you have irrational, nasty, feelings about people (e.g., “Trump is bad, but DEMONcrats would be worse,”), we call it “hatred.” I mean, only because that’s pretty much what hatred is, is irrational nasty feelings, far out of proportion to any harm done to you.

So if you’re a Republican, I honestly don’t know why you’d give the Republican Party your support. They’ve put judges in places that let Trump hurt people; and they even let Trump start illegal wars, without threatening impeachment and removal. Believe it or not, there was a time when Republicans could turn on a bad Republican. Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, and removed, with Republican support, so he resigned. Trump’s murder on the high seas, to stop cocaine boats headed for Europe; and Trump’s illegal wars, should have had him removed. I know, you might say “but what’s hateful about allowing a President to murder a couple hundred people, or several thousand in Iran?” as if human life meant so little that even one murder on the high seas wasn’t enough to remove the boss of federal law enforcement for high crimes.

I use brutal logic when discussing hate; hate is a disease that requires careful eradication, because it’s so enjoyable to us. We love to dream of an enemy, we love to pour out our venom to an enemy, and it’s hard to think about thousands of Iranians, including schoolchildren, dying thousands of miles away, so it’s easy to just, you know, erase them as unworthy of consideration. “It’s nothing personal,” you might say, as you drop a 2000lb bomb on their head, but, when it’s your corpse, it’s very personal. To think of all these people, as being unworthy of life, so that we should just read about them, and act as if it’s “news” and not “crimes against humanity,” well, that’s a pretty hateful outlook.

Look, I’m sorry, but, y’all confused a lesson. In a war, a soldier kills, and will do so in every manner possible, that is honorable, and proud. The soldier can’t think “this is someone’s dad, son, brother, uncle,” and instead must do a horrible job with very limited compassion. We have to be the soldier’s conscience, and we can’t turn our own consciences off, just because it’s people in uniforms doing the killing. They are the ones who can’t think of the lives of each individual; they are the only ones who have that excuse. The rest of us, we have to keep watch, and make sure they continue to act honorably, and proudly, most emphatically by only placing them in honorable, proud, combat situations, like defending us from real threats, not Trump's imagination. “Accidentally” blowing up a school isn’t honorable, or proud. Honor, and pride, require the military use careful rules of engagement, that sometimes put our troops further into harm's way before fighting back, but it maintains the discipline needed to have a world class fighting force.

So: no loud hate. And no quiet hate, where we discuss “collateral damage” as if it were shoe scuffs, and not people’s lives. ObBeetlejuice: “Th-these aren’t my rules, see. In fact, I don’t have any rules.” But thinking it’s cool to snuff people’s lives out, as if they were a burning cigarette butt, is hateful.

So, no offense, but it’s really hard for me to imagine a good Republican who is free of hate. If you think the party is doing okay, it should have removed Trump already, so, no, it’s really not okay.

If I loved you, I’d do it, so I try to do it, and it doesn’t work, so I try again, and it still doesn’t work, and I get into a rage with myself, summoning all of my adrenaline, and I still can’t do it, and I want to throw a tantrum, just throw myself down on the floor and scream for a while, but it doesn’t do any good and leaves you with a sore throat. Hey, eventually, you try everything, and I do mean everything. Slap the wall, that hurts enough, to wake you up for moment, and you can hope you stay awake, but you never do. It didn’t even work for your parents, once the fear and adrenaline rush of a spanking wore off, so why would it work for you, when you know how noisy and whiny your stupid brain is?

I have to do it now, you see, if I loved you, I’d do it, but not “someday,” I’d do it now, you see, right now, and sure, the best time to plant an oak is a hundred years ago, next best is today, but you could have been too exhausted the whole effing hundred years! You can’t wait for your body to get better, you have to live your life, with other people, now! If you don’t, you’ll die, so….