My Chiropractic Experience, Part II

I don’t even like looking at this picture.

Part I is here.

The next step in my journey toward battling my fear of chiropractors and their bone-cracking infernal ways happened when I attended a tweet-up last month. A get-together of San Diego tweeters, a tweet-up is a pretty regular occurrence in this neck of the woods. This one happened at Dr. Klein’s office, where he and @sogeshirts hosted a bunch of us to shuck and jive and learn more about SEO. Turns out Dr. Klein is — you guessed it — a chiropractor and invited us to try a spinal evaluation, where he’d check the alignment of our vertebrae. I opted out, but then I heard there’d be no cracking anywhere on my person, so I relented. I laid down on a table, submitted to a chiropractor touching my skeletal system, something I’d never done before ever anywhere, and of course discovered my bones were completely jacked up. Out of alignment, stuck, screwed royally.

Believe me when I tell you I didn’t care. My C-7 vertebra could stay where it jutted out of my head. Because no one was going to crack it back into place. NO ONE. Same with my T-2 and L-4 and whatever the hell else was jacking me up. So case closed.

Although…I had to admit I’ve been feeling a little unwell in those areas. Tight, you know? Unable to swivel my head to the left or right without crying out Tourettes-style. My jaw kept unhinging in uncomfortable ways, my sinuses caused me undue angst, and I’d suffered from ocular migraines with alarming frequency. Surely all that weirdness could not be related to my unruly C-7, et al?

Gently and without hitting me upside the whacked-out head, Dr. Klein explained that nerves run down the length of the spinal column and poke out (not a clinical term) the sides of your vertebrae, and when your muscles (there are hundreds of muscles connecting each vertebra to the other) contract due to an injury, they pull the vertebrae closer together, compress nerves, lead the cartilage between the vertebra to stick and cause general jack-upedness. Also, the popping and cracking sound of the bones when a chiro works with you? That is the sound of the stuck cartilage coming apart to free your range of motion and uncompress your nerves and is NOT the sound of your bones being ground underfoot by wild pigs.

Who knew?

Since my neck vertebrae were crazy out of alignment, chances are the nerves in my neck (the very same ones feeding my head and leading to my eyes, sinus area, etc.) were compressed and causing some of my issues.

But I still didn’t care.

After telling me of my troublesome spinal condition, and after me telling them yep, thanks, me and my C-7 will just limp out of here right now to return never anytime in Never Ever Land, Dr. Klein’s staff looked at me in that way sane people do to Gary Busey.

“What are you afraid of?” Dr. Klein asked.

And when I answered “You and your hands of death,” he showed me this robot cam device he uses on people like me who un-enjoy bone cracking. Which is really cartilage unsticking, but still sounds like devils eating my liver.

So I went to an appointment.

Stay tuned.

Also! Next week I’m posting a picture of me in my bathing suit! Because we were just talking about scary stuff!