Saturday, April 29, 2006

A Tale of the Chiropractor or How I Came to Love My Surgeon Pt.I

When I was a kid, I used to move my bedroom furniture. I was a budding design student or architect or I was just bored - I'm not sure. It wasn’t light furniture, either. It was huge, dark, antique furniture that I hated. That might have had something to do with the re-arranging. I may have been hoping to push it out the door. Didn’t happen.

Over the years, the habit stuck. I moved many times in my younger days and each time I had to re-arrange the furniture several ways before I was satisfied. Yes, I drew diagrams and measured and pictured it in my head, but I had to live with it to decide if it was really what I wanted.

All of this created a bad back.

Fast forward several years to my 20’s. I am married to my Hubs, have four children under the age of 7, and suddenly am stricken with lower back pain from hell. I can barely move. My parents, who have been going to chiropractors for years, try and encourage me to try one. Me? I’m scared of things I don’t know and go with what I do know. I go to my medical doctor. In medical lingo, my “primary care physician”. You know, everyone must get their piece of the pie! You can’t just jump right to the specialist, you have to get a “referral” that takes 10 minutes and costs $200. No wonder our health care system is such a mess. I could go on and on about this one, but I won’t. At least, not right now.

I then am sent to an orthopedic surgeon who pokes and prods and sends me to a neurologist who puts needles in my legs and sends electric current through them. (Remind me not to be taken prisoner anywhere at anytime. I can’t take the torture.)

After all the x-rays, exams and god-knows-how-many questions, I am told I must have 6 weeks of complete bed rest and take muscle relaxers and pain pills. I will say this, as much grief as I give my MIL, she did step up to the plate on this one. Between Hubs and her, they managed to take care of all the kids for those 6 weeks. Me? I never knew they happened. I was so drugged I didn’t know if it was day or night. I slept 24 hours a day and only got out of bed to pee and nibble on something.

Unfortunately, when the 6 weeks were up, nothing had changed.

Back to the “professionals” who recommended physical therapy. Okay… did that for several weeks. No change. Back to the docs. Now what? You guessed it… 6 more weeks of bed rest and meds. You have Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

I finally called my parents and had their chiropractor recommended someone in my area. What did I have to lose at this point?

We made an appointment and Hubs went with me. We had the x-ray, the thorough exam, the questions… always questions… and finally the chiro said, “We need to have you come every day, twice a day for awhile, but I think your husband needs to take you out to dinner and a movie tonight - you’ve been cooped up in the house waaay too long.” Did I mention I fell in love with him on the spot?

To be continued…