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Previous Volume 355:1415-1417 October 5, 2006 Number 14 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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My new patient barely returned my handshake. Instead, she hurried to the cramped center of the exam room and knelt on the yoga mat she had placed on the floor. Within seconds, her nimble body twisted into implausible forms — a human pretzel, a sailor's knot, a fleshy corkscrew.

"You see," she explained while extending her spine into an improbable arch, "I can't do the cobra or downward dog like I used to. I just want to know if there's something wrong with me."

I reread her doctor's referral note: "76-year-old woman, complains of gradual stiffening over last several years. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

Dr. Scannell is a practicing rheumatologist and geriatrician in Oakland, CA; an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, San Francisco; and the regional director of the Department of Medical Ethics at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland.

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