Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

BACK TALK

by Bert Stratton

I tried to cancel the shot in my back. I’d already had a shot, and I wasn’t keen on getting a second poke. But I had this brutish pain in my right thigh. I couldn’t walk too far, or swim, or play tennis. I had a herniated disc. I used to categorize water joggers as wusses. No more.

At the PT place, I saw a young woman without the lower part of her leg. That shut me up for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, I biked to Chagrin Falls, and somebody posted that on Facebook and everybody thought everything was cool with me. (The only thing cool was the bike riding. That didn’t hurt my back.)

The pain felt like 100 red ants crawling on my thigh, or 1,000 cell phones vibrating. It wouldn’t go away.

I canceled the second shot. No, I postponed it. The doc, the first time around, had said there was a one in 10,000 chance I’d be paralyzed from a poke. I had to sign off on that. I dithered. I had a few tricks left: cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, chiropractors, massage, acupuncture, four more PTs and another doc.

I’m not complaining, am I? Just reporting. I’m reminiscing. This all happened five years ago. I still think about back pain a lot. It gets your attention. I got the second shot and steadily improved.

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1 comment

1 Stephen Mumford { 12.09.22 at 10:42 pm }

I had debilitating back pain for decades. MRIs revealed 2 severely herniated discs, L4 and L5. Sometimes I could barely walk for weeks at a time, and took opioids daily for the throbbing, unceasing pain. I had several very painful injections with decreasing results.
Finally on the verge of getting an operation, I read a book: Healing Back Pain by Dr John Sarno.

I skipped the operation and I’ve been free of back pain for years now.

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