I threw my back out two weeks ago. I was sitting on the edge of the bed (or as Hot Wife and I fondly refer to it: “the workbench”) and when I reached down to put on my sock, the pain of 40,000 vasectomies erupted from the middle of my spine, shot up to my left shoulder blade and instantaneously crippled me. Hot Wife came into the bedroom and found me on the floor in the fetal position, whimpering (which is not altogether unusual, but since this particular display was accompanied a pronounced wince on my face, she could see that it was more than my standard tantrum pose).

About two hours later, I managed to unfuck myself, step into some shorts, and maneuver my car to the nearby office of a chiropractor. I walked in bent over in agony and was escorted to a patient room shortly thereafter (something about my howling – “It huuuuuurts! Owwwwww! I’m dyiiiiiiiing!” – made the office staff quite eager to get me into a walled room, ay-sap.).

The chiropractor had me lay face-down on a turquoise pleather-covered bench that even had cushions for my face. He put a hot pack on my back and left the room. Ten minutes later, he returned and started feeling around on my spine. It tickled and I giggled a bit, but the fun stopped when he honed-in upon the point of origin for my agony. He pushed on it and poked at it and the intense pain caused a little trickle of pee-pee to come out (but I was face-down so nobody saw).

“Alright,” he said. “You have what we call a twisted rib. There’s a point where your ribs sort of rest on the outside of your vertebrae. You’ve tweaked that area somehow and your rib is pinching on a nerve. I’m going to have to push it back into place.”

“OK,” I mumbled into the face cushions.

Still face-down (which is not a position I generally like to hold when there is another man in the room), he had me lift my head from the face cushions and exhale all of the air from my lungs. When they were empty, the chiropractor thrust his stacked palms into my back with all his might. It made a noise like someone being whacked in the back of the head with 20 stalks of wet celery wrapped in a chamois. Kuh’THWAPLE-CRACK! And just like that, I was healed.

(Funny story: the first time I ever went to a chiropractor and heard my own spine snap and pop like that, I started laughing and couldn’t stop, no matter how hard I tried. I thought I’d heard every sound my body could make, but there’s just nothing quite like the sound of one’s own vertebrae exploding in a symphony of cracks and thuds.)

(Another aside. One of my favorite movie lines ever is this one, spoken to Napoleon Dynamite by Uncle Rico: “Your grammaw’s in the hospital. Broke her coccyx.”)

While I was going through the mail about a week after the aforementioned Kuh’THWAPLE-CRACK, I found an explanation of benefits form from our health care provider. It detailed what our insurance had paid for my visit to the chiropractor, itemized by the specific services he provided. It included the following line item:

Hot/Cold Pack: $36

Thirty-six dollars. To put a hot towel on my back and leave the room. Obscene! I vowed never to return to Dr. Rip-Off.

Of course, vows are often more fragile than we’d like to believe.

Sunday morning, I went to my regular basketball game and had already played two full-court games (missing every shot I took in the process, which means nothing other than that I am consistent in my suckitude) when I bent over to pick up my Gatorade and felt the same crippling pain shoot across my back. I made it through the day on Diet Coke, peanut M&Ms and some Vicodins I borrowed from my mother-in-law (perfectly legal, no?), but I was at Dr. Rip-Off’s office first thing Monday morning.

He escorted me pathetic carcass to exam room three and had me lay down on the face cushions again.

“Sit tight,” he said. “I’m going to get you a hot pack.”

“Actually,” I said, again speaking into the turquoise pleather, “I’d like to skip the hot back this time and get right to the back crack-a-lackin.’”

“But we need the heat to loosen up the muscles in your back,” he said.

“The only thing your hot pack loosens up is the possibility that I’m going to have to stand at a 45-degree angle for the rest of my life because I sure as hell ain’t payin’ you no $36 to stick a heating pad on me,” I said. “Now crack!”

I learned shortly thereafter that one really shouldn’t make a chiropractor angry. He’ll crack your ass six ways to Sunday (whatever that means). And if, like me, you’re so disenchanted by his billing practices that you happen to make a comment about his mama, he might snap your back so hard that you go pee-pee in your pants again (a lot this time) and have to cover your moistened crotch with a borrowed whiplash collar when you walk to your car.

Comments

Kuh’THWAPLE-CRACK, uhhhh! does that feel good. I like when he cradles my head in his hands then with one swift violent motion twist my head all the way around. It shoots lightning straight out my toes.

I recently found your blog. I have to say that if you didn't mention your hotwife every now and then I'd swear you were David Sedaris (great author of funny shit). Thanks for making me pee in my pj's a little every morning. I'm showing my chiropractor this post later today, she will love it.

ooo, that post makes me want to light face down and have a $36 hot back and some crackin.

We call those guys "chiro-crack-tors".

I could use a bit of back crackin' myself... and a warm blankie and a nap.

I hate chiropractors. When I go to a health-care professional with a physical ailment, I want him to FIX it. I do not wish to enter a life-long relationship with him for "maintenance." I have my own damn kids to support.
And you're right--there are few things as bizarre as hearing your body make a noise it has never made before.
Hope you're better.

My cousin is a Chiro, I'll have to show him this. The first time they popped my neck at my old dr's office, I didn't know he was going to. Scared the shit out of me but now I kinda want him to do it again.

have to say...you were asking for it, mate. $36 is mere pennies compared to the riches of being painfree, right?

have an eery feeling you and my husband were separated at birth. i left him this morning pouring over the recent bill (all covered by insurance, mind you) from the dentist. he was questioning the dentist's product choice and whether he *really* needed to use white instead of silver filling. and *who* is paying for that lexus parked out front anyway?? and WHAT A CON!

and that is where i left him and fled to safe sanctuary of work office. glad i could smile at people and not give them a mouthful of metal.

how much did he charge you for that whiplash collar?

DGM - back to his old form in posture and in writing. Nice entry, Dude. Needed that laugh this morning.

The funniest part of that Napoleon Dynamite quote is the mispronunciation. Rico calls it a "cock-yx". Fucking HI-larious!

Having someone pummel you in the exact area that you're feeling intense pain is not my idea of being helpful. But I know many people who swear by chiros, so I'll take your word for it.

Oh, and PS, welcome to the world of managed health care, my friend. Don't like it? Move to Canada like the rest of the disenchanted Americans. Pick me up on your way.

$36 for a hot towel? For that money in my neighborhood, you get get a hot towel applied forcefully by an Asian prostitute.

Of course, she's only turning tricks to pay her way through chiropractor school, so the circle is complete.

Nice!

I went to the chiropractor once (when I got a stiff neck from opening a jar of jelly) when the wife insisted I go after 2 days of whining.

I completely laughed and was almost swearing (like that one scene in 40-year-old virgin: the waxing) when the dude was aligning my spine and then told me I had to make a visit every 2 weeks for the rest of my life.

I asked him when I would be able to move my neck again. He said "probably never the same way ever again". He then gave me the bill and I never went back.

I'm into Motrin--crack now until it heals on it's own.

The most interesting / disturbing thing to me when I was going to a chiropractor last year was that she would hold my head in her hands, tell me to completely relax, and would proceed to twist my head further around than I think it's actually supposed to go - and it felt GOOD.

And yeah - the cracking sound from the inside of the body never gets old...

"It made a noise like someone being whacked in the back of the head with 20 stalks of wet celery wrapped in a chamois."

NIIIICCCEEE. OMG. Just laughed my ass off.

I think the laughing thing is some sort of back-cracking-magic-thing. A few months ago, a friend cracked my back (stupid, I know) and I laughed for a good fifteen minutes.

And I didn't even NOTICE the sound.

I took my second child in for a well-child visit a couple of years ago; I asked her a quick question pertaining to treatment she administered to my oldest child a few weeks prior. She answered it...then had the audacity to bill me. She's no longer my pediatrician. I've never been to a chiro and from the sounds of it I hope I never do. Kuh’THWAPLE-CRACK? Nooooo thanks.

I just started going to a chiropractor about a week ago. I've now seen him twice and have had two alignments.

I also laugh hysterically when he cracks my neck. I have no idea how else to react. Glad to know I am not the only one ;)

Yeah, I live in Canada and our happy little health-care bubble is bursting, so don't be in too big of a hurry to rush this country. My son needs a pediatric enterologist and a psychologist to help him with quite a severe problem and they have decided to completely shut down the only clinic in the city to prove a point to the government that they need more funding. It's absolutely maddening that if I want to get my son the help he needs, I have to fork out $125 an hour.

I have neck and back suck, so the chiropractor is a necessity.

I also am fond of playing the Air Guitar while bouncing around my living room , so it becomes a vital necessity at times.

That's weird...I seem to be having the same problem right now. Only, I have this constant pain under my left shoulder blade. I'm still holding out...parents, friends, everyone says to go to the chiropractor, but I'm being stubborn. Hope you feel better and that it doesn't act up anymore.

what does that mean, "i have neck and back suck"?

is it terminal?

is the chiropractor your sex partner?

what the...?

Similar story. My mother went to the ER this past Saturday and instead of billing us for the usual co-pay, the 20-something was like, "How would you like to pay for this today?" They made her pay right there. So now if you're dying, be sure you can write a check.

Sarah and her Goon Squad sent me here-- though after reading for a while, I realized I had visited here once, back before I started keeping my own blog.

I'm going to read here more often. That post was pretty damn funny.

Who cares if you went pee-pee? Good for you! $36 for a heat pack is insane. I just got a bill for $180 for a doctor who spent exactly two minutes with me to write a 'scrip. INSANE, and very funny post!

We paid $810 for an orthopedist to high and low five our 2 year old who had broken her collar bone.

I feel your pain - except for the 40K vasectomies - I'll leave that one to you.

ok.......me has been to the Chiro an me lives in Canada.......an trust me it not so cheap up here either.....me dont knows about the 36$ for a hot-pack mind ya but Canadian Health Care aint all that American's ( or some of you ) thinks it is.......sorry to disappoint ya.....not enof doc's an year waitin lists....if that not enof ya could wait for 5 years just to GET YER OWN FAMILY DOC........do that sound lovely??????? LOL LOL me wouldnt live anywhere else spoonleg

newfieswoman

First I've never heard such infantile dribble in all my life. Just because you 'threw' your back out doesn't mean that it was out just when the pain hit you. There are in many cases severe cases of nerve degeneration as well as disc degeneration. No patient 'has' to come in so often, however, if you want to stay healthy and keep the pain away it would be wise. Clearly you are an ignorant buffoon. Its people like you who can't get it through your thick skulls that if chiropractic were such the evil menace you apparently believe it to be, we wouldn't have have lasted nearly 112 years in spite of the ignorance thrown at us.
Not only that our profession has existed in various forms over the past 4,000 years in every major civilization since ancient Egypt, bone setters were there name in many of these civilizations. Hippocrates studied the spine, named the nervous system 2500 years ago and came to the conclusion that nerves were the key to self healing of the body. Clearly you were not aware of this. I am a third generation chiropractor and have long since tired of the stupidity that plagues so many morons like yourself. It is the fact that my patients who do come in and the lives I have changed for the better that keeps me from going mad whenever I hear a moron like yourself speak.

Enuf said you fucking moron.

Rich, how professional for you to call someone a "fucking moron".
I just saw a chiro for neck pain (referred by an MD no less), one who "served on the 2000 US
Olympic Team". He dick the neck rotation thrust without telling
me. Now my neck hurts 10 times as much and I can't even look up 45 degrees.

I just find it funny that a "Doctor" such as yourself would call
anyone a "fucking moron". Very professional.