Pain In The Ass

A few times when we've done really long hikes with heavy rucksacks in the states, when we come to set up camp I've had really bad pain that stops me from straightening until it passes. Strangely it's manifested itself again over the past few days when we've walked a long way (10km+) but over easy ground and without bags so I figured I'd better get it checked out.

I found a chiropractor that spoke English and got myself a few x-rays (by strolling into the x-ray shop of course!). They clearly showed a displaced vertebrae at the bottom of my spine, apparently from an old injury, as well as a not very curvy curve. So for the next 5 days I trotted down to the doc and got my spine 'adjusted'. It wasn't particularly unpleasant, but a little strange when he dropped the table and my back clicked.

Fortunately we had a lovely camp site and cool young doc, there was also a great ice cream shop in town so the whole experience wasn't as bad as it could be but we did start to get a little stir crazy as I don't think we've stayed in one place for over a week before. We ended up visiting the pyramids again (the 3rd time!) & spent another enjoyable couple of hours checking out the less visited corners.

At the end of the week I can't say I felt any better than normal, maybe even worse to be honest, but I did compress a month's worth of treatment into 5 days so it's not really a surprise. Hopefully it the long run it will prove worthwhile as for the first time in my life I've actually felt old.Read more