Chiropractic Story

Wiped Out Part 1

I wiped out on the ice the other day; couldn’t see it under a light dusting of snow and landed flat on my butt. I didn’t break my tailbone, and both feet went in the same direction, so I didn’t break any other bone either, or crack my head open, thank God. Head wounds are bloody things, and it probably would have drenched my coat, which I can’t afford to replace. I’m assuming a cracked open head could also be potentially problematic, not to mention painful.

Guess I got off lucky this time; it was just a bruised butt and man, did I feel it. I’ve said it on these pages before; the problem with being the massage therapist is that I can’t work on myself.

I told my friend Jack (not his real name) about my fall and how much I was starting to hurt, and he insisted that I had to see his chiropractor, because my pelvis and backbone might have been knocked out of place. I told him I’ve never been to one before and had no real intention of seeing one now because I’ve heard so many horrendous stories from other people. I sure wasn’t willing to take the chance this lady could screw me up, especially since this was simply a matter of bruised muscles that would correct themselves in a few days. 

But Jack could, quite frankly, be a little stubborn, especially if he thought that I was the one being stubborn. He knew that a big part of my resistance was the bill, and offered to pay for all my treatments. He and his wife are very big-hearted people, and I knew this offer was given in love, but I still really didn’t like the idea of being crunched on, especially since this lady didn’t have a massage therapist to work on me before hand, which means that all my muscles would be cold. I told Jack that it sounded painful just to think about, so he upped the ante, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll go one time; if you really hate it, I’ll never mention it again.” “Never?”  “Never.” “Agreed.”

Jack waited for me in the living room while Angela (not her real name) showed me her treatment room. She had an electronic treatment bed, with a built in face hole, and also a hole positioned, let’s just say, about eight inches below the bellybutton. I told her I wasn’t going to give her a pee sample through it if that’s what it was for. She laughed and said that was to make men more comfortable when they were lying face down. Figured it was something like that.

She told me she was going to relax my muscles before she worked on me, and I thought, “Oh good, she does know how to massage, and apparently through clothes.” It’s always interesting to compare another professional’s work to my own, but instead of feeling nice warm hands working on me, I heard this nasty electronic buzzing over my head. And I was suddenly getting thumped by this machine thing on my back. Granted, it was very warm, but also very hard, and apparently all it could do was thump, and it kind of tickled when it got over my butt, which really didn’t need any more sensory stimulation at that time.

Then she started feeling down my backbone with her hands, and telling me how badly out of alignment I was. I thought to myself, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls.” Then without telling me what she was going to do, she suddenly crunched, straight down between my shoulder blades. I thought for a second she had just pressed a broken rib into my heart muscle. Ow, that one hurt.

She then told me to roll over on this very narrow bed. My shoulders are pretty wide for a woman, and they just barely fit onto the table. And it was even narrower at the hips, so to attempt to roll over on this thing, and look graceful doing it, was not easy.