A Tail of Sport

At ten years old, I attended my first basketball practice. My mother forced me to go, an action I don't think she regrets but one that definitely shaped our lives. I wore white Keds, which work well while dancing in parade routines but not so much when running on shiny gym floors. Despite that, I still challenged myself to outrun every other girl there. I succeeded.

I played basketball for the next eight seasons, eventually becoming a center and using my dance training to become the team rebounder (cause that involves a lot of jumping, you non-sport-inclined folks out there). Playing in the post requires either a large, tall body to push people out of the way and grab missed shots or a truckload of perseverance and major hops (that is, an ability to jump). Large people will throw their smaller opponents to the ground in the quest for rebound greatness - which brings me back around to my spine.

When one falls on the bum, the last bone in the spine will feel most of the impact. That is the coccyx, better known as the tailbone. It is the last remnants of a tail shrunk by evolution. The trauma of a fall is absorbed by the coccyx, causing it to bend upward into the pelvic floor (a group of muscles at the bottom of the pelvis). The coccyx is a tiny bone, particularly relative to the sacrum and lumbar vertebrae. It is possibly the size of the index finger, if that. Yet repeated trauma and pressure on the coccyx can cause it to bend in any direction and get stuck there, like a wagging tail stuck in glue. That in turn pulls the lumbar-sacral region, causing nerve pain and/or strain on the vertebrae and discs.

The sheer number of times I have fallen on my butt when I was playing ball is daunting now in retrospect. I always bounced right back into the game, but adrenaline is a powerful drug, and among its many abilities is to function as a transitory painkiller. My osteopaths find my tailbone intriguing - and classic - because I haven't fallen since my senior year in high school and yet here I am with a displaced coccyx and crazy lower back problems.

The coccyx is a rather insignificant bone, but it is common knowledge that the spine functions as an entity rather than as individual parts. My history clearly shows that I was an active person with potential for mild exercise trauma, which in cumulative form could become injurious.

My question is, why on earth did my spine surgeons not check for this? It seems logical to me that before cutting into someone's spine - which would seem the second-least understood part of the body, after the brain - you should check the health of the entire thing to make sure everything is a-okay.

But that's just me. In the meantime, I can relive my glory days in the uniform, and wonder why I thought all my aches and pains were completely benign. Maybe it's because I was seventeen years old - or maybe it's because the only evidence of trauma was hidden in my two-inch long reminder of a tail.

photo credit: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/01/health/adam/19464.jpg