So I show up at the ortho specialist's this morning, trudge up the stairs to check in just past the dot, and they ask which doctor, then tell me, "He'll see you downstairs."
The old lady probably needed the exercise anyway, despite what my knees are telling me and my back is hinting at. Down to the other waiting room, and after a short wait, they take me back, weigh me (under 14 stone, which is awful but improving) and tell me to change to be X-rayed.
Zap, zap, and I'm sitting in an exam room, glowing slightly and looking over someone else's manuscript when the doctor comes in, introduces himself and asks, "Has anyone ever discussed the defect in your spine with you?"
The which in my what? I tell him no and he sits down, calls up the images, and proceeds to show me in today's images and in a set from 2021 when I did something stupid that I have since forgotten, how the important very last bone at the bottom of my spine is, in fact, two bones, a big one carrying the weight and a little one, floating around, more or less linked up as it should be. They start out as two bones, but should fuse well before your first breath. Mine did not.
It turns out that this biological miracle is so rare, so dire, so weird that, per the doctor, "If I X-rayed the spines of a hundred people at random, around seven of them would have this." It's not a problem, unless it is, and then...yeah. Technicolor pain, if you do it wrong.*
He wrote a couple of new prescriptions, one of which the pharmacist wants to talk to me about (get enough daily prescriptions, the darned things gang up on you), has me in line to schedule physical therapy (oh, joy) and says I can go back to work -- if I refrain from twisting, bending, twerking or trying to pick up anything heavier than a full-grown tomcat. I didn't ask about parachuting or rock-climbing but they're probably off for awhile, too.
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* The correlation between this and the share of people with glitchy backs isn't perfect, but it's not insignificant.
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