Triggered

A number of years ago, at right around the same time I came down with Bell’s palsy, I experienced an intense muscle spasm in my neck and a subsequent stiff neck and shoulder that persisted for more than a year.

At time things like massage helped a bit, but it was clear that the problem was compounding. One element of it seemed to be all the compensation my body was doing to support and protect my arthritic right knee. This was leading to ongoing strain on the right ankle, the left hip, the right lower back, the left shoulder, the neck, and so on.

Somehow I got referred to a doctor at Kaiser in Sunnyvale who administers trigger-point injections, which are functionally similar to acupuncture or dry-needle treatments, but use a cooling spray and inject a painkiller to help minimize the discomfort.

We discussed the spasmodic stuck muscle knots or trigger points in their parlance and he identified the two or three most painful and tender spots and then, after numbing the area a bit, used the need to press on, jiggle, and worry the tight spot.

When he hits the crux of the biscuit I feel it deeply, almost like an electrical current. It’s not very painful, but it is intense. The doctor told me some patients reports a feeling of the muscle cramp “melting away.” For me it feels more like a literal unclogging, like when they used to flush out my ears sometimes as a kid, or when an impacted wisdom tooth was pulled.

I’m sore now a bit afterward and icing the shoulder. But that first treatment made a huge improvement almost immediately, unfreezing muscles that had been painfully cramped for more than a year, and sustaining a lasting effect as well.

A month or so later I went in again so they could tackle the next level of knots in this complex series that had accumulated over time. Imagine a system of pulleys where one has gotten snagged. After a while the lines that communicate with that pulley get snagged as well, and the problem radiates out over time.

The second treatment gave more palpable relief, both immediately and over the next few weeks as anticipated. By then I was within a few months of my long-planned and long-awaited total knee replacement and I figured I should get that taken care of first, especially given the way the knee issue had been constantly contributing the stresses that recreate and reinforce the problem in an ongoing way.

So, now fast forward four months. The new knee is doing great. I’ve been telling people “I feel forty again” (which means young to us, for you actual young people), because I don’t feel hobbled and I am not having to constantly second guess every urge to run, hop, skip, or jump.

In a time when so many things aren’t going the way I wish they were, I feel fortunate to have these steps forward, large and small, to celebrate in the meantime.