Rode my bike to the doctors office this morning. I saw a sports med guy named Dr. Lyons for my neck and SI joint, which have both been hurting pretty bad since February. He is definitely the best doctor of any sort I've been to in Logan, and would recommend him for sports injuries (he's in the Canyon View Orthopedics office, Budge Clinic). Mostly my favorable review for him comes from the the amount of the time he took with me (not in hurry), the thoroughness of which he explained and educated me, and also the fact that he's the first doctor I've been to that's given any respect to chiropractors and LMT's. It also helped that he is a marathoner. Anyway, after some x-rays, he said that I probably have facet arthrosis in my neck, which sounds worse than it is. Basically my neck is supposed to curve, but instead it's straight. Bad for the shock absorption, I guess. He said it's also kind of a cartilage issue, and very similar in some ways to having runners' knee in my neck. He also noted that my joint and ligament flexibility is unusually high, and my muscle flexibility is too low. Many people have point out my poor muscle flexibility, but he's the first to talk about a different type of flexibility. Unfortunately, this combination may make me susceptible to injury and misalignment, perhaps explaining why I've had runners' knee in both knee at different times, chronic SI pain on both sides, and neck pain for no apparent reason. I had told him that ibuprofen was effective in easing the pain. He thought that was a good sign, but rather like dropping a glass of water on a large fire. He suggested something more like dropping a large bucket on a fire, which of course means cortisone. So now I'm taking oral cortisone for 6 days. This is the most powerful anti-inflammitory available, so it may just snuff out the fire, and allow my neck to relax or whatever it needs to do. But if the cortisone doesn't do it on it's own, he also prescribed physical therapy (yea!). So I'll see how things go through the weekend, and may or may not start PT next week. Of course, I also have Josse's magic scraping tools on the way, so I have high hopes for those too. I'm really sick of PT, and don't want to go back. If the PT doesn't work, he said that the next step would be doing a blood test for some condition or disease that I may have symptoms of, but I honestly forgot the name. I think he said it goes by A.S. for short. A habit I'm trying to get into is asking for a DVD of any x-ray I get, or any ultrasound my wife gets. I figure it's my body, so I should have a record of this stuff. And the hospital staff seems ready to oblige, all you have to do is ask. For your blog amusement, here's the image of my too-straight neck. Note that I do indeed have a brain. 
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