My chiropractor turned out to be nothing like the caricature of my imagination. He was young, blond and hip with the build of a pole vaulter. He greeted me with a firm handshake and in the fifteen minutes of our time together never once stopped talking. Even when his hands were engaged in inflicted pain on my neck, he kept attempting to educate me on the finer points of soft tissue disruption. Every so often he would ask for a response from me as in, "how does this feel?", to which I would try to answer in as manly a way as possible that it "wasn't too bad." Truth be known, it was quite excruciating.
You never want to hear any doctor say, "oh dear." But, two minutes in, he's oh dear-ing the condition of the soft tissue around my neck. Then he goes on and on about how after he gets done, I will probably be a little sore for a couple of days but that he is so excited because he is sure that he can help me...then it happened. Suddenly, he gripped both sides of my head securely and gave a violent yank to the right filling the room with a loud SNAP!!! Up until this point, I had been determined not to let out any whining whimpers of pain, no matter what he did, but this time I heard myself let out something that sounded like..."ummm...GAAAAAAAAAKKKKKK, What the heck was that!!??"
He assured me that what he had just done was crucial to my recovery and that I would thank him later. Actually, my neck did feel better after this scary yank, so I said nothing. Then he handed me off to his assistant whose job it would be to teach me five excercizes to do every day. Think...a 25 year old nurse Ratchet...Then, it was off to a small room where I was instructed to lie face down on a padded table, where my nurse affixed four electrodes at various places on my neck, then covered my entire back and neck area with heavy and hot blankets. She then says, "Now, I'm going to turn these on and you need to tell me when you can feel the tingling and when it's not too uncomfortable let me know."
"When it's not too uncomfortable," isn't exactly a phrase that puts the mind at ease. However, this ten minute procedure was the most enjoyable part of my visit. I was told that the purpose of it was to help break up the damaged soft tissue thing. All I know is that when it was over, my neck felt better than it has in weeks, at least it did for about thirty minutes. Before I knew what was happening I heard myself agree to another visit next Tuesday when they would let me know exactly how much these visits were actually going to cost, since I still hadn't satisfied the gargantuan deductible on my health insurance,(Thanks, OBAMA!).
So, there you have it. I survived my first trip to the Chiroprator, and it may have helped...a little, I think...maybe.
One more thing that has nothing to do with my neck...the squirrels have returned. This year's batch are more brazen and cunning than any from years past, actually eating my tomatoes before they even get ripe! Last night I was firing at will at one particularly pesky one when right at the worst possible time I ran out of ammo!! He looked straight at me and I swear I saw him smile, actually more like a smirk. This will never happen again, my friends. I finally found my ammo stash this morning and I am loaded and locked, baby. This is war!
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