As ideas are found to help cerebral palsy, they are put to the test. We are interested in exploring how affective something has been. The supplement Muscle Ezze has helped my symptoms of cerebral palsy, the rigidly and tension in my body have been reduced. The quality of sleep has improved and anxiety has also been reduced. People around me are feeling more comfortable in my presence. It seems easier to interact with me and my listening is improving. Still most of these impacts cannot be measured scientifically. Many of them are based on emotionality, what life has been like then and now. However, one thing we can measure is working with the chiropractor. Dana suggested the supplement after some curious questions on my part. He has the unique perspective of working on my muscles at least once a week. Along with beginning the Muscle Ezze we slightly increased the frequency of our appointments. Our years of work together have been about helping my cerebral palsy, but also possibly finding solutions for others who have CP. I’m not a doctor, so I can only speak about the things I notice.
We began the Muscle Ezze and more frequent appointments because things had seemed to stall. Working with Dana had been a steady progression for many years. However, our gains had slowed to a crawl and I was feeling stuck. My hips seemed to remain as our largest challenge, we couldn’t get them to become even. During our first appointments way back in 2008, my hips were out of alignment by an inch. That inch was one of the largest disparities Dana had witnessed in one of his patience. Normally when someone has such a discrepancy between their legs, it causes so much pain they can’t walk. It feels impossible to know how long my hips had been off that much, causing that kind of pain. Cerebral palsy can bring about feelings of discomfort. The sad thing is how long that pain for me, was simply dealt with. That pain throughout my body from having one leg an inch shorter than the other had become normal. Nothing had been presented as an option to relieve that kind of discomfort. We have come a long way in helping ease the pain that was plaguing me for years.
Through our consistent work over the years, we have closed that inch gap of length between my two legs. The distance hovered around a quarter of an inch for a long time. As we kept working on getting closer to even, the distance came down to an eighth of an inch. My body would hover around that mark of an eighth of an inch in discrepancy between my right and left leg. This seemed to be as close to an even hip level as we could get. The frequency of my appointments continued to take place on a weekly basis. Pain had subsided greatly throughout my body from the agony experienced from being an inch off balance. But, we still couldn’t get my hips to remain even for any length of time. We might experience a streak here and there, where things would hold square for a week or maybe a couple weeks. Then, the streak would end after a few weeks and back to an eighth of an inch of difference my hips would go. It was becoming discouraging that we couldn’t seem to get over that hurtle. Boomeranging between an eighth of an inch or sometimes even slightly more was still causing discomfort. The interesting part however, seemed to be how accustomed to the discomfort I had become.
There had really never been something to help me understand the amount of pain my body was dealing with. One day my mom went to see the Dana about her back being in pain. My mom had been the person who suggested for me to see the chiropractor to begin with. She had been seeing him for a while and it truly seemed to help. But, over time my mom had gotten back squared away, now only going to visit Dana if her back began acting up. This time mom had waited a while before breaking down to go to the chiropractor. The pain had simply become too much, so she made an appointment. It was clear mom had been in some discomfort leading up to the appointment, so following the adjustment I was curious how far out of alignment my mother had become. When mom told me, the legs had been uneven by an eighth of an inch, it was surprising. It was the same discrepancy in me each week and it had taken my mom a while to reach that discomfort level. It was one of the first times I truly began to realize the painful impact of CP on the body. How could it cause such discomfort in my mother, but for me the pain of being offset an eighth of an inch was normal, or even better than things had been before.
If we were going to continue progressing toward getting my hip back to level on a consistent basis, it was time to try something different. So, we gave the supplement of Muscle Ezze a shot. We also raised the frequency of our appointments. Not only was the supplement hopeful to reduce tension in my body, help me sleep, and take away some anxiety, but it might help with the chiropractic adjustments. The rigidity throughout my body, brought on by cerebral palsy, has seemed to make those adjustments more challenging. My tension causes the body to fight against the movements Dana has been making during our appointments. If that tension can be reduced, it’s more likely to improve the eighth inch gap in my leg length. But, that would be an added benefit of taking the supplement, not its primary focus. The other idea was to have my body adjusted on a more frequent basis. So, we decided to up the visits from once weekly to every four or five days. It would work out to seeing Dana once the first week and twice the second week. We remained hopeful it would help improve my cerebral palsy symptoms even more.
Stress has been another major factor contributing to the trouble with my uneven hips. Stress is an emotion that seems too often cause tension through someone’s body. If that stress causes tension in a person without a disability, then my body may be getting hit from two angles. The cerebral palsy already causing tension would seem to be pressed into more tension when my body experiences stress. In order to truly make the body easier to move, the stress factor was required to decrease along with the CP tension. After taking the Muscle Ezze for a month the tension began subsiding. It was then starting to show up in my hip alignment. As our appointments slightly ticked up in regularity, the length difference of my legs has decreased. We have gone from consistently being off that eighth of an inch to my hips becoming level or off by the slight sixteenth of an inch. All of these measurements are simple approximations, but Dana has always seemed to be pretty consistent. We have seemed to find more tools resulting in forward progress.
As we continue our process, things seemingly get better. There isn’t a lot of measurable evidence to the improvements. However, we can guesstimate the distance my hips are out of alignment. Dana doesn’t take a ruler to my shoes each time I lie down for an adjustment. But, he’s been doing his job long enough to develop a pretty good eye for these things. Now, seems the ideal time for our next step. With the new supplement having worked well for a month. We are going to reduce our appointments back to the original once a week. The idea is to proceed in the mystery of figuring out what is having the greatest impact. Taking the Muscle Ezze supplement out of my diet doesn’t make much sense for all the good it seems to be doing. So, if we return to our original appointment schedule, we can look closer at the impact it is having. Maybe by taking the supplement, getting adjusted once weekly will be different than before. It has been an exploration, on both sides, since we began working together. Dana and I will continue to search for ways to not only help my challenge of cerebral palsy, but hopefully use that experience to help others with the disability.
A Journey With Cerebral Palsy 