Last Friday I tweaked my lower back playing doubles beach volleyball. I've done this before: I get the spazzy-twingey pain, take a couple of days of rest, ice, stretching, etc and it eventually gets better. I spent a good part of the weekend medicated and flat on my back. By today, I'm still sore, but I'm feeling a little better.
The g/f suggests that I go see her chiropractor, who has apparently worked miracles after a minor car wreck she was in a few years ago (the sheer force of the collision cracked the rear bumper cover of her Saab clean in half!). She even had a coupon good for a
Free Life Changing Chiropractic Exam (a $50 value). No, seriously - it said that - ver-bait-'em [sic]
Let me be very clear up front, I'm skeptical right off the get-go. I had an interesting run-in which a chiro years ago, which I'll detail later.
So I made an appointment and went in this afternoon. The staff was super-duper friendly, like scary friendly. Like "welcome to our cult" friendly. Other patients who walked in the door were greeted by name with over-the-top cheeriness. I fill out the patient info questionnaire, which was a Scan-Tron style sheet, which I thought was very efficient.
While I'm waiting, I'm poking around the at the reading materials available and looking at the various posters. The have pamphlets on how to use chiropractic care to cure hearing loss, weight gain, eyesight problems - even breast-feeding issues! Another detailed why babies who are delivered via C-section need chiropractic adjustments because of the trauma involved involved in being ripped out of their mother's uterus; I always thought that squeezing something the size of a watermelon out of something the diameter of a coke bottle would be more deleterious to the contents of said watermelon-sized-entity, but I guess that's why I don't have "DC" after my name.
At this point, my BS meter is starting to glow.
I'm ushered to another room so they can get my vitals. This room is full of skeletal models, and the walls are full of pictures of car crashes. After taking my basic vitals (tech: "Wow, I can barely get the BP cuff over your arm!"
), I finally get to the first part of my exam, where I tell the "doctor" where it hurts, and she pokes and prods, tells me to lift this and that, etc, etc. She takes a couple of X-rays, using equipment that I swore was used as a prop in a something you'd see on MST3K; the build plate said 1983. The X-ray room is full of anatomical whiplash diagrams, which made it appear that getting rear-ended is only slightly better than a trip to the guillotine; these diagrams show huge wedge-shaped tears in the tissue, like the poor guy pissed off a lumberjack.
I had to take my BS meter out of my pocket and run it under cold water.
So the they develop the films, and eventually Doc comes back and says "It's just what I was afraid of; your pelvis is tilted to the left, which has caused a lot of wear in the [technical term] and you have bone loss and pitting in the [technical term]. I'll have to take some measurements to see exactly how much. "Oh. Can I see the pictures?" "No, I don't have time right now. Would you like to begin treatment today?" "Well, what are you going to do?" She then tries to explain the treatment in "car guy" terminology (because she knows I'm into cars) except her knowledge of cars is probably no deeper than "I put gas in it and magic happens." She then says "We're not going to fix it today." WTF? I ask "So what are you going to do?" She sez - starting to get testy - "We can begin treatment today." "Um, how can I consent to treatment, if you won't tell me what you're going to do?" (more testiness) "I don't have time to go over it right now, but we have to start getting your spine in line, like tuning up a car engine, so it will run better." "Um, no thanks. I can't consent to you poking around if you're not going to tell me what you're going to do." At this point she gives up "Ok, have [receptionist] make you a follow-up appointment and we'll go over it then.
The receptionist is waiting for me like the bridgekeeper at the Bridge of Death; I was trapped into making a follow-up, which I did out of morbid curiosity. I got a schwag bag with a book on the wonders of chiropractic treatment, and not one, but
two pamphlets on how to get your insurance company to pay for your treatment, and one of those gel packs you put in the freezer, which I gave back because I already have nicer ones.
My BS meter exploded at this point and I quietly tossed it in the bushes on they way back to my car.
I don't think they really want much to do with me, as I made it clear that this wasn't covered by my medical insurance, I don't have an ambulance chase on retainer, I wasn't wounded in an industrial accident, I wasn't crippled in a horrible touch-typing incident, and I already had a clue as to how to fix myself. I'm almost the perfect non-patient.