Chiropracticalligraphic XPL-adocious

I'm typically a whiner, but I don't whine too much on my blog so as not to blow that aura of cool around me that so many of you have come to know.

>crickets<

But lately — say, for about the last year or so — I've been dealing with a steadily intensifying lower back problem. It may or may not be related to an issue I had when I was a wee lad in my freshman year of high school, when, somehow, my pelvis got "out of place." All I know is it hurts when I stand for more than, oh, say, seven seconds…and I used to be able to stand for hours and hours.

I've been trying to stretch it out, but I have notoriously tight back muscles, and they've been in spasm for pretty much all that time. No matter how much or how long I stretch, the pain comes back pretty quickly. Fortunately for me, sitting usually eases the pain, as well as just about any amount of forward bow in the back.

Last week, when I was in constant pain and almost no position save for sitting down and leaning forward brought any relief, my co-workers suggested ibuprofen. I'm reluctant to turning to medication for every last ailment, so I had all but forgotten it could help. I ate about four tablets and within an hour the pain had eased up some. But it was time to get in to see a chiropractor. The last one I visited about two years ago is in the city, just a few blocks from where I used to live, but I sure as hell wasn't about to make that commute for an hour's visit! I perused the health insurance company's provider list and found a guy close to both home and office, and made the call.

On Friday afternoon I went in and, after filling out the paperwork…again (the woman who answered the phone asked me all the same questions. Wasn't she writing this all down?!)… I was ushered into the chiropractor's office. He's fairly young…probably younger than I am…and good-looking, and seems very enthusiastic about his work.

He had me lie on the table face-down, and he grabbed my ankles, lifting my feet up together and bending my knees. He said, "Uh huh. One leg's shorter than the other. See?"

I craned my head around — difficult to do with my back screaming at me — and, sure enough, one leg appeared to be shorter by a few millimeters. He said he had to determine if it was structural or muscular. I thought, How could it be muscular if it's from the knee down?

He sent me up to the x-ray room where they zapped a few of my cells and and then zipped the files back to his computer, and he showed me that my hips are cocked a few degrees off of the horizontal, and my spine curves slightly with the hips. It looks like my pelvis is once again out of place. There's also a distinct misalignment between my L-5 and S-1 vertebrae, and possibly a distressed, or maybe even herniated disc between them.

Then the weird shit started happening. With me standing before him, he asked me to hold my arms out at my sides. He told me to resist him, and then he pushed down first on my right arm at the wrist. He managed to push it down about 10 degrees or so. Same with the left arm. Then he looked at my side and said, "Oh. I see why. You have a cell phone on your belt. Go ahead and take it off."

He then repeated the test, and "couldn't" get either of my arms down past 5 degrees of travel. He contorted his face and grunted and grimaced, but it felt like he was pulling way back on his effort compared to the earlier test. He then told me that a mobile phone emits a constant electromagnetic pulse, and my wearing my phone on my belt allows that electromagnetic pulse to interfere with the nervous system's transmissions of impulses, causing the body difficulty with motor and strength tasks.

I felt he was doing an elaborate amount of playacting, but I bit my tongue just in case he was going somewhere with it.

He wasn't.

He then put me on the table, did a few strength tests — all of them seemingly legitimate, this time — and then had me roll onto my stomach. Instead of doing the usual spine cracking — which I was ever so hoping for — he instead felt around on my neck until he found a tender spot, and then felt around on the left side of my back, where the pain is concentrated. Then he had me regulate my breathing while he pressed little circles on each point, his finger on my neck lightly thumping somehow with each rotation. He switched sides and did it again Then he lifted my feet again to compare leg lengths, and he said, "See? Same length."

He never did any cracking, telling me he would do that on my next visit. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I made an appointment for Monday — today. I decided that if he didn't do any cracking, and instead did more touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo, then I was going to find a big, burly, bone-cracking chiropractor who would do it the way I knew.

I kept the weekend low-key: I did some house cleaning on Saturday, and never left the apartment. On Sunday I went out for breakfast and then to Target and a grocery store for some necessities. While walking around those places I kept leaning heavily on the grocery cart (buggy, y'all), trying to ease the pain caused by the walking.

This morning I awoke to a somewhat reduced intensity of pain. I still took some ibuprofen, and it further eased the pain while I was at work. I still had to stand and do some things, and the pain let me know it was still there. I took no more pain relievers after the two I took at home before I left for work.

The pain truly seemed to be much less by 5:00, when I left for my appointment. The chiropractor did some more of the funky finger-poke circle massage, which he said is acupressure, and then he did a for-real, honest-to-goodness, traditional back cracking! Of course, my lower back is so tight, all he managed to do was make me practically roll right off the table without anything popping, but that's beside the point. I left the office with even less pain than when I went in.

Say what you will about the weird, homeopathic voodoo witch-doctor bullshit he's doing. (Did I mention his whacking me in the forehead with sprigs of hemlock? No? Well, never mind, then.)

It's working.