I've Gone Straight

I recently started seeing a chiropractor.

This, after a lifetime of disparaging them.

It was a medical doctor who got me started.  “No matter what,” he said, “never let anyone “crack” your neck.  It will paralyze you.”  He tapped the x-ray of my neck, a crooked, convoluted depiction of a Jenga tower, with the end of a pen liberated from a Holiday Inn.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” he said.  “Never see a chiropractor.”

So I didn’t.  Because if there’s one thing that can be said of me, it’s that I’ll listen when it’s convenient.

And so to compensate for the increasing instability of my neck I took up yoga.  And wearing one of those bags of uncooked rice you heat up in the microwave.  And purchasing pillows.

And margaritas.

And it all worked until the day it stopped working, the day I couldn’t raise my left arm, couldn’t pull a shirt over my head, couldn’t raise my own margarita glass.

“Hmm,” says the doctor.  “What pharmacy do you use?”

And so I consulted with a professional, took out a small loan; and am here, before you once again, as a woman with two sets of fully functioning limbs.

I go twice a week, where a small and intensely chatty woman hooks me up to electricity and heat lamps.  This is then followed by another woman – not as small but just as chatty – who tells me to relax and then bends my spine to her will.

I take back all the things I said about chiropractors.