Blog #26 June 29th

Disorientation, am I in Europe or Asia?

Finding a healer on the road. (Part 1 of 3 Blogs on this topic)

On June 24th, I drove with only a minor wrong turn that took me a little longer, bumpier, scenic route to the Santorini airport. My flight at 4:15 PM was delayed an hour, so I arrived in Istanbul, Turkey about 8:30 PM. I cleared customs, changed money for some Turkish Lira, and found the transportation guy waiting outside with a sign with my name on it. It took a while to find him, as the sign had 3 other names as well and my name was listed as “James Gary”. As the van drove into Istanbul through thick traffic, the large buildings, dramatically lit signs, and Turkish language everywhere, I felt my heart pounding with excitement. Istanbul is a vast (17 million people on two continents) sprawling, colorful, muscular exotic city pulsing with power. The driver threaded his way through the old part of the city, called the SultanAhmet district (named for the famed blue mosque, the SultanAhmet Mosque, with its 5 minarets that is there). He went down a no entry one way street where the tram rails run, and then drove across a little paced park to park around the corner from my SultanAhmet Hotel. It was a small door front on the main street across from the SultanAhmet tram stop.

Arriving, close to 10:00 PM, the proprietor, seemed confused, spoke no English, and gave me a key to a tiny room on the second floor, overlooking the street. It was very old, but well cared for, the carpet extremely thin with stains from perhaps a century or more. The “bathroom” would be better called a W.C (water closet). There was a sink with mirror with about 3′ feet clearance to the toilet. In between, on the wall was a faucet with cord and nozzle for a shower, not a separate space. The entire W.C. Was about 6′ long and 3′ wide, no exaggeration. The plumbing looked ancient and I wondered about portable water source. I went back downstairs and was able to communicate with the proprietor my question about potable water from the tap, his eyes widened and he said “yok!” (means there is not!) He beckoned and led me further up the stairs to the top level where there was a small refrigerator. He gave me a 1 1/2 liter bottle of water. The bed was not bad and I slept well.

I awoke the next morning, determined to find a capable Chiropractor or Osteopath now that I had departed Greece and was in Turkey.

I digress to vignette of pain treatment seeking on my sabbatical. I had been having waxing and waning neck spine pain with headaches throughout my trip. In fact, my spinal pain was not an insignificant part of the reasons for leaving my practice and embarking upon this sabbatical. I experience periodic flareups of pain, misalignment, and lost motion that cause me to seek help from a chiropractor or osteopath. Ironically, I had had severe flareup in Crete. I had talked to Irene, the owner of the villas and searched the Internet for a possible caregiver in Ierepetra or anywhere on Crete. There were no chiropractors or osteopaths to be found. I later learned that neither of these providers are licensed in Greece. Greece does have a large assortment of physical therapists who perform what is called manual medicine. Irene told me of a physical therapist named Nickos who had helped her, her mother, and her husband at various times with painful musculoskeletal conditions.

Initially, I did not pursue it, since I have not In the past found relief from physical therapists. After a few more days, however, it became worse and I decided to seek an appointment. Irene was pleased and said that she would lead me over to his office, as it was hard to find, there were no street signs and one way streets made it a maze. I drove my gray hyundai rental car behind her car. She made a number of turns, and came to rest in a narrow side street that was mostly residential. She pointed and gestured vigorously at a glass fronted first floor of a building that was completely covered with drapes and had no sign. She had said that he was coming from another appointment and would not be there yet. I was just glad to be getting help and comfortable waiting. Also Greek time (similar to Turkish time) is very elastic and things are rarely on time (including their airlines:-).

I waited about 45 minutes then called his phone number. After two tries, he answered with thick Greek accent that was difficult to understand and the street noise made it impossible. He was in his office which was not where I was waiting. He tried to direct me through complex series of turns with multiple landmarks (grocery store, billboard, post office, etc etc.). For the next hour, I weaved my way in and out of narrow, converging, one way streets and did find the post office, but not his office. I called and he agreed to reschedule for the next day.

Later, Irene spoke with him by phone and was upset about her error, but led me to the correct office address this time. She came in with me and proceeded to have a loud, seemingly angry argument with him in Greek about his having moved his office without telling her. Eventually, she conceded that he had not moved his office and chatted with him for a while about family and friends in common. When she drove away, Nichos, a small, wiry bearded man with flyaway hair graying in places, looked over his spectacles and examined me minutely, nodding his head and muttering to himself in Greek. At length, he asked me why I had come. I began to describe the problem and history, and he cut me off quickly with a sweeping gesture, saying “I know precisely the problem, it is tight muscles.”. “Come here, I will show you what you must do”. He began to speak about our human evolution from the apes while holding a wooden wall mounted dowel rod and swinging back and forth, stretching his shoulder behind him. He demonstrated four more gymnastic style exercises and watched me carefully as I imitated his movements. He was surprised and muttering again, that I was able to make each of these stretches without much pain or problem. He commanded, “you must do them 4-5 times a day!”.

I was a bit worried as he seemed to be finished with me and walking away. I asked him a question and he frowned sternly at my questioning him. “Come here, he demanded. I went to a table behind a curtain where he palpated my back a bit, finding tight muscles and nodding sagely to himself. “just as I thought, you have a muscular problem.” I tried to suggest that my long experience with the problem had made it clear that it was a combined muscular and skeletal problem. He would hear none of it. He asked me to lie face down on the table; it was uncomfortable since there was no padded face support. He began to massage my upper back very skillfully, talking and telling stories, and singing at times. He drenched me with a medicinal oil he said had special properties known since the time of the ancient Greeks. He told me “I am an artist with my hands”! Then he began to pull and manipulate may arms. My muscles were feeling looser and less painful, but my primary problem with my neck seemed to be something he did not want to consider. He had a diagnosis and was sticking to it. After asking if I had any objections, he began to place multiple acupuncture needles in my back, my scalp to the crown of my head, my feet, and along side of my left knee. I had had a 20 session course of acupuncture previously, so I was ok with trying it again. It had given me temporary, less than 24 hours relief before, perhaps it could be helpful.

He left me face down with dozens of needles in place for perhaps 45 minutes while he walked about, sang, and treated an elderly Greek woman behind the next curtain. He continued a running line of chatter that was filled with proud and bold assertions. When he returned and began to remove the needles, he asked if he could tape my back and shoulders into a position that would allow them to settle in a new pattern. I had heard of this method and a physical therapist at home had tried it with some results. I was a bit hopeful. After this was complete, he went to his desk and began to speak about all sorts of things, history, politics, the euro and the broken Greek economy, and his hatred of the Eastern Orthodox Church who pay no taxes and have a stranglehold on the government and the simple people of the land. It was an interesting monologue, but after being there more than 2 1/2 hours, I was eager to get away. He assured me it might take a few days to completely heal and that I could swim with the tape on. He asked me to call in one week if needed.

I was able to keep the tape on despite swimming every day for 5 days. However, I had awakened the day after my appointment with him, with an entirely new pain, at the base of my spine, in my sacrum. It got worse each day, until I would gasp with a muscle spasm in my buttocks when I would lean forward slightly, or bear uneven weight on my feet. It was worst in the morning upon arising, got looser and less troubling as I tried to stay active during the day, and would sometimes become more severe in the late afternoon if I became fatigued.

I called him again for a follow-up appointment. This pain very low in my back now superseded my neck pain and I thought perhaps his massage and acupuncture had been a little help (hope springs eternal…. I am a sucker for and a believer in the placebo effect). I also wondered if his changing the angle of my neck and shoulders might have caused an unfortunate compensatory reaction in my low back. When I went back to his office, he was running about an hour behind. I had brought reading material, so I was comfortable waiting. Several times, people came in off the street to ask him questions and interrupted his work with two clients behind the curtains.

Again, he pronounced the problem nothing but muscle strain. He had me move in various ways to demonstrate that it was muscular strain. None of the movements elicited any pain. Nevertheless, he had me lie face down, and noted the muscles of my upper back were less tight than the previous week, which indeed they were. He did not check my neck witch was the original problem. He did massage and loosen my low back, then put suction cup devices over my paralumbar muscles. He taped my lower back in a new position and talked of history, politics, the economy, and culture of Greece. He spoke with conviction about various other cultures and asked me about countries I had traveled to. I asked him about his travels and he said that he had never been off the island of Crete. He told me that it didn’t matter because Crete was the center of the world and every nationality came there sometime. “I am a professional of history”, he proclaimed. He went on to command me that I must visit the island of Christi, (a Greek national preserve, island off the coast of Ierepetra)because of the special energy there. He dug through papers to show me pictures and clippings of the island and it’s geological and botanical characteristics.

Gradually, he began to speak of a community of like minded Cretan people who camped and squatted in the forest on the island, against the Greek law. I began to understand that he was a follower of a small group of post Marxist communal living people who sought to reject the materialism of the west. Indeed, he charged very little for his lengthy treatments, lived simply without a car, riding a bike. He also spoke with ardor about his love and expertise at sailing, part of his ancestral Cretan tradition. He also loved to dive and showed me some interesting artifacts he had found on the sea bottom around Crete. He spoke to me, always, with his head back, looking over the rims of his glasses, with great assurance, watching me carefully for my reactions and to be sure I was paying attention.

When I escaped from Nickos office, I noted no change in the new pain in my sacrum. I left the tape on for 4 days, just in case it might help. I searched the phone books and called several recommended physiotherapists, but their range of care only included muscular therapies. I resolved to put up with it and noted that walking and swimming both helped it be less noticeable, though it would be bad getting out of bed in the morning. After, several more weeks and 4 days in Santorini, I had arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, where there were listed some excellent chiropractors with broad training from England etc.

And so, I obtained an appointment with a reputable chiropractor for 3:00 that afternoon, my first day in Istanbul. I spoke with him by phone and he said he lived on the Asian side of Istanbul, at Kadikoy. I spoke with the daytime proprietor of my hotel, who spoke good English and was very knowledgable and helpful. She said that I could reach Kadikoy by the tram out in front of our hotel.

Starting about 2 1/2 hours early, I found how to purchase a reloadable pass for the tram, bus, and Metro. I boarded the crowded tram and watched entranced at the city life going by. I was glad when we reached the Galata Bridge and crossed over. I disembarked at the Kadikoy stop and began to walk, following the instructions the chiropractor had given me. I walked one direction and did not recognize any of the landmarks that I had been told to look for. After, awhile, checking my compass and noting which direction was the water we had crossed, I grew uneasy. I decided that I must be turned around, going the wrong direction. I began retracing my steps. I asked local Turks along the way and they seemed baffled and gave me conflicting directions. This continued for over 1 1/2 hours, goings back and forth, studying the map and my compass, showing it to the men along the way whom I asked for directions, including a policeman at his guard station holding a large bore automatic weapon of some sort. Finally, now less than a half hour before my appointment time, I found a taxi driver. At first, he too was nonplussed. After looking carefully at the address, directions, and map, his face lit up and he pulled away from the curb. We drove away from the water, further and further from Kadikoy. He spoke no English and my first day Turkish made no impression on him. He kept saying ” ayvet, Kadikoy, Kadikoy”. We drove into a modern part of the city, further and further, then suddenly we were on a huge span of bridge.

After a while, on the other side, I began to see Exit signs for Karikoy and he pointed, saying “bak, bak” (look, look). We followed the exit and drove a long circuitous route. It was now 5-10 minutes after my 3:00 appointment. My heart sank and I contemplated a huge taxi bill with missed appointment and the need to find my way back to my hotel in rush hour traffic. Breathing deeply, practicing awareness and trusting in the process, I waited as the driver drove onward. He began stopping frequently to ask people by the roadside for directions to the address, as he did not know this part of town. This went on until about 3:40 pm, when I spied the address and got out. He asked me for 50 Turkish Lira, about $28.00, not bad for the length of the drive. I walked up the steps and rang. After a while, the door clicked open and I went up the elevator to the 3rd floor. The chiropractor was there, very calm, and not upset. He was working with someone but told me that he could see me in 40 minutes or so. I relaxed and breathed and tried to release the extra amount of tension in my back and neck, exacerbated by the past 3-4 hours.

When he invited me in to his office, he explained the Kadikoy, Karikoy confusion. The “r” in Karikoy is rolled and sounds like a “d”, easy mistake. But what was a huge mistake was that I had crossed the Golden Horn, a small body of water across the Galata Bridge. I was still on the continent of Europe. I should have gone on the tram to the ferry dock and crossed the Bosphorus, the straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and separating the European side of Istanbul from the Asian side.
I had been looking for his office on the wrong continent! He was a good clinician, took a careful history, and explored the problem, making some manipulative adjustments of my spine. He worked at it for a while, but there were segments that were stuck out of alignment and my muscles were locked around them. I rescheduled for another treatment a few days later.

I followed his directions to the ferry and returned to the European side, crossing the great channel of the Bosphorus, to find my way back to the tram. It was rush hour and the streets were choked with honking cars, trucks, motorcycles weaving in and out and a huge volume of pedestrians hurrying every which way. I walked and walked and could not find the underground tram stop. Eventually, I found my way into a beautiful mosque, to rest and cool off and watch the people pray, come and go. It was called the New Mosque, because of its recent construction in the past 20 years. It was beautiful, with two minarets, right beside the shore of the mighty Bosphorus Straits. Inside was decorated with intricate mosaics of geometric designs and ornate Arabic calligraphy of names for Allah and his prophet, Mohammed. A steady stream of Muslims stopped outside at the row of faucets to perform their ritual washing of hands and feet. Then they removed their shoes or placed plastic shoe covers over their shoes (as I did) in order to walk on holy ground, upon the thick layer of colorful Turkish carpets. There was a separate area cordoned off for the women to pray, in the back and a cordoned off place for non Muslims, tourists like me to sit or stand. The families with women totally covered hijabs, all black, only a slit of an inch for their eyes were uncovered. Children ran around and played while lines of men solemnly stood, bowed, knelt, and prostrated themselves, saying quiet prayers, repeating the positions again and again. Some tourists crossed out of their assigned area to take pictures and were chased away first by an older bearded imam, then later by a policeman. There was an air of seriousness about it that did not encourage too much talking or informality. It was enough for me to sit and contemplate God as I know Him/Her and try to sense the spirit’s presence around me. As much as I am open to Islam and the One God, I could not help feeling something ominous, perhaps a little angry in the atmosphere of the worshippers. Too many disrespectful tourists?

After I had rested, I decided I would walk back to my hotel, seeing what I would see along the way. Before long, I found myself lost in narrow winding streets, a maze that led me further into the Egyptian spice bazar. There were lines of little shops with dozens of different heaps of colorful spices and herbs. One stand had a sign in English for a specific herb that was supposed to be an aphrodisiac, labelled Turkish Viagra in clumsy magic marker. There were shops selling ancient looking copper ware, brass samovars, elaborate old pitchers, engraved trays, hookahs, and a hundred and one strange and unfamiliar shapes and sizes of antiques from Ottoman times. It was fascinating wandering through these byways, but it was very crowded, pushing and checking for my wallet in the close quarters. The smells were captivating, pungent, and sometimes stale and foul. The array of sight, sound, smell, crowding, smelling bodies was dizzying and mesmerizing, and I was growing very tired, my stomach uneasy, my body overheated. I continued to seek a way out, turning one way, then climbing steep narrow streets, and looking for signs of a main thoroughfare. On and on, I climbed and wound around streets whose direction reversed or ended in a stairway or large closed and locked door. At length, I found the tram way, which I followed many blocks back to my hotel.

After lying down for a while, I was both hungry and had heartburn. I wandered outside my hotel past a plethora of shouting, touting restaurants that tried to pull me in to look at their display foods. Most did not appeal to me at that point, spicy and drowning in olive oil. I found a restaurant with some more benign looking vegetable dishes on display. When I only ordered bread and two vegetable dishes and water, the waiter was outraged. Surely, a tourist like me would order the most expensive meat heavy dinner. They hovered and kept bringing out dishes that I refused. At last, I escaped from them, still urging me to have one of their delicious looking very rich deserts. I slept well that night.

Thus began my time in Istanbul. From then on, I was careful to limit my exploring to one or two locales per day and return to my hotel to lie down in the mid day.
I began to get oriented, to find my way around and recognize and speak more Turkish words each day. I visited the vast underground Roman cistern, the Blue Mosque, AyaSophia museum, Istanbul University, the Grand Bazar, and other sites. Every night, outside my window, there was a performance of some kind in the wide park space surrounding the Blue Mosque, the center of SultanAhmet, each it’s own story. Of course, 5 times a day, beginning at 4:45 AM and finishing at 11:15PM, multiple mosques throughout the city began their wailing prayer call, Allahhhhaaahh, Akbar………….., that lasted perhaps 2-3 minutes though it seemed longer:-). There was a mosque directly across the street from my window as well as the nearby Sultanahmet Mosque, and others, a melancholy early morning and nightly chorus. An opportunity to contemplate the One occurs in each such moments of pause. It calls me to prayer also.

Mountain Christening. John O’Donahue

After a hard climb
Through a dry river bed,
Its scoured stones glistening
Like a white chain to the horizon,
Descending between its links
The long concerto of a stream
Where the listening mountains
incline,
Rising against the steep fall of soft
bog,
Searching for our grip
In the shimmer of scree.
At last on the summit
Of the Beanna Beola,

Overlooking three valleys,
Delighted to be so high
Above the lives where we dwell,
Together for a while
From other sides of the world,
Sensing each other,
Strangely close,
Suddenly, your voice
Calling out my name.
I call yours.
The echoes take us
To the heart of the mountains.
When the silence closes,
You say: now that they
Have called our names back
The mountains can
Never forget us.

Fluent. John O’Donahue

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried along by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.