Back to the Internet!

My back is extremely angry. Neglecting to shut down my daily routine for 2+ weeks despite persistent lower back pain finally struck back this morning. Ten minutes into the weekly Tuesday skate, my back effectively quit functioning, leaving me nothing more than a padded, gelatin filled puck target hunkered on the morning ice. 16 hours later, I am still on the couch, icing, heating, pill popping and praying for a miraculous healing in time for me to arrive in Australia healthy and ready to play. 

Of course I did not seek medical help, I own a laptop for that. Spending the day wikipedi'ing, googling, yahooing, webmd'ing and spine.com'ing I successfully diagnosed myself with a Herniated disc. Tingling feet, severe pain in the lower lumbar region, pain while sitting & standing, this case, despite being my own was a no brain er. Of course at seven o'clock when I finally saw my chiropractor on an emergency visit ( Thank you again Adam ) after 2 minutes of rigorous limb and muscle manipulation he quickly threw my hard sought diagnosis in the proverbial waste bucket. Instead he convinced me that the cause was merely numerous ligaments and muscles plugging into my lower back had decided to wage wore after god knows how long of daily abuse. He is a pain practitioner. I being a proud mid twenties male like to believe that because I can bear the treatment, and bite my lip, am somehow earning a quicker and more effective heal. At least believing that makes the eye popping, profanity inducing "treatment" that much more bearable. I am back at home now, affixed once again to my favorite cushion, ice on, hoping for a quick heal. 

A friend of mine told me to "Have a conversation with my back." With only two and a half weeks before the first game in Australia, I will rule nothing out and will be holding numerous performance reviews and feedback sessions with my lower lumbar region beginning first thing tomorrow. I will update as I see fit. Wish me luck. 

As for my Internet medical career. I can't help but think of the thousands upon thousands of similar individuals who incorrectly diagnose their symptoms daily. It really is a brilliant idea though in hindsight. Provide people with medical prompts, a shiny, clean format, and complete with superbly placed commercially fabricated medical staff photographs and you truly can empower anyone to feel as if they are wearing the white coat. Granted, if I wasn't currently in a world vagabond state of life, and actually had medical insurance, an urge to phone my physician would of been granted much quicker. Perhaps therein lies the brilliance of online medical sites. Accompanying every symptom, cause, therapy, prevention and diagnosis page with a disclaimer encouraging medical help might actually subconsciously compel many more of our injured population to find a way to seek real, live, beneficial medical advice. I mean a hockey player without health insurance was compelled to spend an hour of complete pain at the hands of a licenses professional thanks in large part to the soothing advice of html formatting and text. Ah the life of the web generation.