Erect-tion

Have you ever been to a chiropractor? Me neither. Well, not until now. And I love her. 

Starting at about 24 or 25 weeks into my twins pregnancy, I started having . . . issues with mobility. Basically, I sucked at walking. My coworkers commented that I was already waddling, and my perinatologist mentioned that I looked as big as a full-term singleton pregnancy. I started having nasty pain in my pelvis due to a separation of the pubic bone. Within weeks, my back started giving out. Etc.

As the pregnancy progressed, it got bad. Really bad. Chris often had to help me get dressed, get into bed, get off the couch, walk to the bathroom. He even had to help me pick up my foot to get my leg into the car. (On a related note, my husband is freakin’ amazing. What a man, to help his practically invalid wife pick up her freakin’ foot to get into a car. Thanks, babe.)

I assumed that it would get better after delivery. Wrong. The pain continued, just in different ways. My hips/pelvis/legs/knees/feet never learned how to cooperate with that whole walking thing. My back spasmed and ached every time I tried to get up from a seated position such that I was often bent at the waist, still compensating for a front-heavy weight that was no longer there. The weirdest thing was that my feet would fall asleep when I laid on my back in bed.

At my six-week post-partum visit at the OB, I rattled off my list of physical maladies to the nurse. She gave me the name of a chiropractor who has lots of experience with pregnant and post-partum ladies. 

A potential cure for the horrible pain? I called and made an appointment that same day.

Dr. T is a vivacious little thing with 30+ years experience popping and cracking and smashing people back into alignment. I was terrified, honestly, because Chris had had a bad experience with a chiropractor some time ago. Plus, the whole idea that they can snap your neck and paralyze you kind of freaked me out.

At my initial consultation, the doctor took X-rays of my neck, pelvis and lower back. Two days later, I was staring at my X-rays in horror. 

Several things:

• A healthy neck is supposed to have a gentle curve. Mine does not. It is stick straight, probably due to some car accidents I had years ago.
• I have a scoliosis in my lower back. My spine sways to the right near my waist.
• Rather than pointing upward, my hips are flared outward and are tilted forward.
• My tailbone is pointing out instead of curving down.
• My pelvis bone is still slightly separated.

With this information, the doctor went to work. She set me on her table, a contraption made up of a bunch of movable parts. First, I laid on my stomach. With her hand on my hip, she pushed down at the same time that she dropped a section of the table. BOOM-SNAP!

Woah wait. WTF is going on here.

I didn’t feel any pain. It was just totally fucked up and unexpected.

After popping my hips and butt, she flipped me over and went to work on my pubic bone. This was definitely scary, having this little woman balance her weight on my pelvic bone while dropping the table out from under me in order to pop my pelvis back into place. All the while, she is blabbering about all kinds of random nonsense. “Well, I had three babies in three years and raised them as a single mom” BOOM-SNAP! “I can’t believe you’ve been like this for five months, you could have come while you were still pregnant and” BOOM-SNAP! “See I don’t do that hocus-pocus stuff. It’s all biomechanics and science, really. We don’t need so much pain medication, we just need realignment” BOOM-SNAP! Probably the most whack thing she did was snap my neck while chatting about her daughter in college. 

$150 later and I was out the door, feeling that the treatment was a sham. The bitch had cracked a few bones and made a bunch of noise with the table, taken my money and sent me home, laughing at my stretch-marked ass the whole way to the bank.

But then . . .

But then, I went home and went about my day. And I had no pain. I could get up from the couch and stand up straight! My feet didn’t fall asleep when I laid down. This was a freakin’ miracle. 

So, do I believe in chiropractic care  now? You bet your dislocated ass bones I do.