We are all very thankful that no one was killed when the I-5 bridge collapsed in Skagit Valley on 5/23/13, just a mere two miles from this doctor’s home. But a fallen bridge has a pretty significant impact on not just the local community, but on many, many people that depend on that bridge day-in and day-out. The news reporters tout that nearly 71,000 drivers cross that bridge every day. They have already shared many thoughts of alternate routes that commuters can take to still get where they are going. Undoubtedly taking an alternate route will cause your travel time to increase, but that’s the byproduct of an older bridge that maybe hasn’t been kept up to specs over the years. It’s amazing how much we all took that bridge for granted. Many of us locals used it every day and didn’t think twice about its integrity. Now that the damage has happened, officials are trying to decide whether to patch the problem, which means do just enough to get people back on the road, or take the precious time now to fix the bridge to better than it was, meaning make it healthy for the next 50+ years of travelers. Either way, it’s already had its impact on local businesses. Local shops are seeing more traffic than ever past their storefronts, but these people aren’t stopping. The pocketbooks of the local community are concerned.
You could say that the I-5 corridor is similar to your spine. Perhaps you’re in the middle of a traumatic event right now – a fall down the stairs, a sprained back from lifting incorrectly, one sneeze too many causing a shooting pain when you try to sit up straight. One of your vertebrae isn’t aligned right causing irritation to the nerves that pass by it every moment of the day. Thousands of electromagnetic impulses depend on getting messages through to your many internal organs, vascular tissues, muscles, and skin. They are attempting to adapt as much as possible, finding any way possible to work around the trauma. But sometimes that’s the byproduct of an older body that maybe hasn’t been kept up to specs over the years. You use your spine every day, maybe taking it for granted, taking very little time to stop and think about its integrity. But perhaps you have sought chiropractic care and are now in the process of deciding whether or not to put a temporary patch on the problem, enough to get back to life quicker, or attempt to put in the time now to attempt to restore it to as near normal as possible, which would mean to try and make the next 50+ years as healthy as possible. Either way, the trauma has already had an effect on your household chores, relationships, recreational activities, and work. That last one hits the pocketbook kind of rough.
Choices. Choices. Choices.
Both choices have their pros and cons. A temporary patch on the bridge would be cheaper and get the road operational faster, but other parts of the bridge could suffer the same fate at any undetermined moment. Attempting to renew the bridge to a healthier construction now would cost money we might not even have and take longer to construct, but would have a longer more dependable life.
I guess it all depends on what’s important to you.
What were we talking about again?
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