Expert Healing after a Bump on the Head
September 24, 2013
It all started simply enough for me. My bride Abby and I hosted our granddaughters for a weekend. At ages three and one, there was a lot of grandpa picking up one little girl or another. After two days, grandpa's back was hurting. Then came the Monday morning bike ride in the Texas heat. Not enough hydration, not enough stretching, and soon I've got a muscle pull to manage. Way inside, steady pain.
This is new to me. Maybe new like an HP 3000 problem you never saw in your 20 years of working with MPE. Way inside, something like a console Network Interface Card dying. "Do these things have a habit of dying," you might ask, even after dozens of 3000s you've seen or serviced.
So you reach out for service help, like I did. A sports massage, deep like the muscle problem. Seems like the right solution, but as I leave the studio I put weight on the left leg. Wow, no muscle control there at all, and down goes your Newswire editor. Hmm, maybe something to do with a nerve. Then there's the visit to a chiropractic doctor with nerve experience and then trigger point treatment, and therapy exercises. Let the healing begin. Until the middle of the night, when the leg goes out in the kitchen, while I'm getting water to hydrate.
You might know the rest: The fall in the kitchen, against a cabinet and a big cut on the head. It's all new territory for me, even at 56. It ends up in the office of my trusted GP doctor, where he does an exam. Elliott Trester is older than most of the 3000 managers I know. He beams with calm and believes in doing the least invasive things first. If you're lucky, you have a doctor like that for your 3000. It's called first-line support. No matter if you've been as lucky as I've been about injuries. When your 3000 breaks, you want somebody to tell you it's going to be okay, and how that'll happen. Without costing money you need to spend on something else.
You've got someone like that, right? The expert who knows the 3000 better than you -- because if not, there's always a much more expensive way to heal up your IT problem. Maybe as costly as getting something else to run your company.
"Here's where you get the $75 MRI," he says with a chuckle. He tests my tracking of the light amid the dark of the room. "People order all these tests like an MRI because they don't know how to do an exam."
And he says it in a way that triggers relief. There won't be a $500 MRI in my future. There won't be an appointment with "one of the few doctors in Austin that treats concussions," as the chiropractic trigger point fellow suggested. Abby and I giggle on the way back. A doctor who specializes in concussions. The Concussion Doctor? Maybe a chain, or a trade-name?
The cut's taken care of itself, healed over without stitches up on the crown of my head. The exam costs that $75 and I feel better. Not that I'm healed just yet, but I'm under the influence of someone with experience enough that I trust in the healing.
We know of people like this in your community, pros who work for support companies who charge the equivalent of the $75 MRI. Look at your blog pages here and spot the ads where there's support in the name, or a full service shop like Pivital. HP 3000 owners are, for the most part, the equivalent of a middle-50s, kinda-jocks like me. Lucky, up to now, not to need service for a system injury. It happens to everybody, though, if you push that old system hard enough for long enough. That makes a relationship with a simple healer an essential, if you want to sustain your HP 3000 service.