The Story of My Health

I am seriously considering digging into emails that I have written to other people and copy and pasting so that I don't have to think through this again. Let me see.... Okay, I checked, and I don't think it will work. Here's a timeline.

• November, 2010: My left index finger began to irritate me when I was playing my flute at an orchestra concert. Took a week off for Thanksgiving, came back the next week for a chamber concert and the same finger went loco and started to fall off the key in the middle of the performance and I couldn't control it. No, I did not have focal dystonia. Went to a Physical Therapist and Neurologist, both recommended I take a month and a half off from playing (right when I got married... how convenient!) and thought it might be carpal tunnel. No biggie.
• Mid-January, 2011: Began to play again and almost immediately started experiencing serious pain in my back, shoulders, and neck. Stopped playing. Duh. PT thought maybe I had peripheral nerve entrapment. Major fatigue, pain doing any activities where I was using my hands or sitting in the same position for a long time. It was not a fun time. That lasted through the winter. 
• April: Started acupuncture along with physical therapy (forgot to mention that I started seeing a massage therapist in March, too). Who would have ever believed that I would I would allow multiple needles to be put in my body as a pain reliever? Seriously. I still cried when I was like 15 getting shots. Felt more energy, but still in pain. Side note: So when I talk about pain in this post, basically I have pain in my back and neck and shoulders most hours of the day. If I cook, drive, computer, work with my hands, read a book it gets worse. AKA-- the pain increases as the day progresses... unless I'm lucky! You shouldn't feel bad for me, I'm just describing it for what it is. End side note. In April I saw the neurologist again and he put me on this anti-depressant that acts as a pain killer and it basically just left me feeling verrrrry tired all the time and helped the pain just a little bit. I stopped taking that in July.
• May: Things got better as the weather warmed up, but no drastic changes.
• June: We were in Texas for the summer and I saw a doctor there who is a friend of our family. He ordered bloodwork, an MRI, and X-rays. Everything was clean except for maybe my cervical spinal cord (neck area) looked like it might have a slight reversal in the curvature. I also got a steroid shot. Yikes. That didn't work, unfortunately. He suggested PT again, so I started some PT in Flower Mound, which I actually really liked. Lots more of the strengthening component than I was used to in Boston. Unfortunately, there weren't any major changes. I also went to a great massage therapist that my dad recommended. 
• Now: Back in Boston and have been seeing a chiropractor 3x/week. I actually think this could be a winner. I do feel relief pretty immediately after having my neck adjusted and one time it even lasted for a few days. He took X-rays as well and confirmed that there was a slight reversal in the curvature as well as the slight compression of one of my discs. The good news is that it is not too late to correct! We shall see. Pain is still an all-day, every day occurrence for me, but sometimes lately I've seen glimpses of relief.

I think that's pretty much it. I got bored writing this like a week ago and meant to edit it, but I don't want to go through all of that right now, so you're getting the unedited version. You're welcome.

A few other things I don't want to write in a completely separate post:
-In choir last week, a girl walked up to me before rehearsal started and asked me if I was a freshman. I felt so bad for her. She felt terrible.
-I have been toying with the idea of taking Rosetta Stone French for a few weeks now and I think tonight I just might bite the bullet and do it. Allen gets a serious discount through school, so I can take levels 1-5 for $160. Normally I think it's like $199 for Level 1. Allen's been pretty busy and I do have some free time and I was thinking this might be/feel more productive than pinterest/blogs... Plus, Allen speaks French, and I feel like our chances of doing something international are already quite high since he is like a walking tower of Babel, so why not just pick up something to help me along? If you think this is a good idea, please express your feelings now.