Chiropractic Story Part 2

Wiped Out Part 2 

She had me roll half way onto my left side, pulled the right knee and hip towards her, then pushed my right shoulder away from her. I had just basically been pretzel- knotted, and all I could think was, “This can not be good,” especially when she put one hand behind my right hip, her other hand in front of my right shoulder, and told me to take a deep breath and then let it all out. And then, she snapped both halves of me, in opposite directions, and for a second, it felt as though every single vertebra on that side had separated itself from the muscle. This shot of electrical pain went from my neck down to my toes, and I did what any other red-blooded American woman would do when they suddenly experienced that kind of bodily violence; I screamed.

And apparently, neither Angela nor Jack were expecting me to do that. She jumped a mile high and he came running into the room saying, “What’s the matter? What happened?” I said, “What in the hell do you think happened? She just broke me.” 

They both laughed and she said, “In thirty years of practice, I’ve never heard anybody scream like that.” I very (very) slowly stood up, and faced her from a distance of about five inches, and in my most dangerous voice, I said, “Are you telling me, that you have never done that move before, and I am your first guinea pig?” She laugh and said, “Oh no, I’ve done that a million times; I’ve just never heard anybody scream like that before.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m glad I could amuse you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crawl to the car.” They both blocked my way, and she said, “Oh no, I have to do the other side now. You won’t like the results if I don’t.” I figured I’d just been given sufficient proof that I wouldn’t like the results if she did, but I also knew from working on massage clients that she was right; when I only work on the side that hurts, the other side will inevitably start complaining loudly. I knew that if I walked out now, like every bone in my body was warning me to do, I’d wind up hurting worse by tomorrow. But I couldn’t really say I was looking forward to it, and I told Jack he owed me some big-time chocolate for this one.

So I laid back down, she pretzel-knotted me again, in the opposite direction, and then had the unmitigated gull to tell me to relax. “Right,” I said, “No problem.” She said, “It’ll hurt worse if you don’t relax.” I raised an eyebrow and asked her, “Hurt worse than what?” So she tried rocking me back and forth a little bit, to relax me, I suppose, then did her little snapping trick. Every vertebra separated itself from the surrounding tissue, and she had been right; it did hurt worse. But I am proud to say that I didn’t scream this time; it came out more like a lion’s roar. I didn’t know I could make that noise, and apparently, they didn’t either.

Then she told me to lie flat, she went up by my head and started rolling it around like she was making cookies with it. “Only your backbone is in alignment now. If I don’t do your neck also, you’re going to be hurting.” To which I replied, “And what do you think I’m doing now?” She stood up so she could look (up-side down) in my face and said, “Okay, are you really still hurting from the adjustment, or do you just think you are?”  And before I could answer her, she lifted my head up to maximum leverage, twisted it to one side, and then crunched it in that direction. I grant her this; she was smart enough to immediately also crunch the other side, before the electric bolt quite had time to hit my toes, or the muscle cramps started in my neck muscles. Those I had to get rid of myself because, (tada!) she’s not a massage therapist, and I wasn’t about to let her thump me again. 

Dear Reader: Confession time; most of my stories are “embellished” somewhat, and sometimes, as I did this time, I will outright lie in order to make the story more entertaining.  I did indeed wipe out on the ice last week, but Jack took me to see the cruncher more than a year ago, because I’d given myself a severe back ache doing chair massages at the Country Fair, (kind of ironic, isn’t it?) and then slept for three days recovering from it. The back ache had nothing to do with wiping out on the ice. The rest of the story, however, is absolutely true, (except for the part about me being able to stand up to confront her; that was wishful thinking.)