Cracked

I'm off to a new chiropractor this afternoon. I had to ditch the old one. Well, he wasn't really old. He was fairly young. And I hadn't really been going to him long. Thrice, to be exact. But, as many doctors do, he pissed me off.

I think I'm not out of line here on this one, though.

On my birthday, February 16th, I went in with my two day old, almost 11 lb baby to have my neck adjusted. I was in so much pain, and so saggy postpartum, that I looked like a lopsided gimp with a reverse hump. So not attractive.

I pathetically gimped my way into their office. After filling out a small biography, I was handed a DVD player and told to watch the video. I sat with this little screen in my lap, hunching over it (which I'm sure was doing my spinal alignment a world's wonder), trying desparately not to fall asleep while adjusting my newly engorged milk bags and praying that I didn't leak through my breast pads.

Imagine my shock and horror when the receptionist takes me back into a little room to administer a pop quiz on the video.

"Please fill out the questions in short answer form," she instructed.

Like I fucking knew there was going to be a quiz. If I had, trust me, I wouldn't have been quite so concerned about my tits or the spasm in my shoulder blades. As you all have figured out by now, though, I can write a whole lot of crap. And crap I wrote. I just wanted to pass the test enough to get to see the doctor. I felt like Alice in Wonderland attempting to see the Oz... er... whatever the hell. I finished without begging to just see the doctor, which I contemplated doing but getting on my knees, which were still sore from all the kneeling I did during labor, might have sent me over my pain threshold.

"Now, please read this paragraph aloud and explain to me what it means to you," were the receptionist's next instructions.

I laughed. I really thought she was kidding. Until I saw the very serious look on her face. I mean, I haven't read aloud in class since the 3rd grade. I wasn't even sure I could pull it off as sleep deprived and uncomfortable as I was. What if I was illiterate? Would I get tossed out? I cleared my throat and read, ending with a verbal load of crap that had to suffice as "what this means to me."

After about 40 minutes of both verbal and written exams, I was allowed to see the doctor. I felt like I was graduating from mere suffering lug to potential patient and perhaps even most favorite test subject. I looked for caps and gowns, but nothing. At the very least they could have played Pomp and Circumstance, for all the work I had put in.

I'll give you the short version of the visit. He wanted me, at 2 days post partum, to get xrays. I know what they say. I know it is supposedly safe, that it doesn't affect your milk or your baby. But I had just had a baby. My milk had just come in a couple of hours before. Everything was so new and while my baby wasn't a small newborn, she was only 11 lbs. Hell, I could lose that much weight by lopping off a finger.

I refused. Especially after he told me that they didn't have any aprons. I just wouldn't do it. We went round and round. Finally I asked him, "Would you xray your food right before eating it?"

"Of course not," he replied. "But I am not asking you to xray your food."

"No, you are asking to xray my two day old baby's food."

With a hurumph and a grimace, he dropped the subject.

Then he went about his adjusting. He wanted me to lay flat down, face first, into a massage type table. Yes, flat on my front. With my enormous, hugely engorged udders. It would have been like trying to lay flat on two mini pontoons... that squirt.

"I can't lay like that," I told him with a smile.

He grunted a dirty look at me and said, "Yes, yes, you can. Yes."

"No, no I can't."

"Yes. You must."

"Have you seen the size of my breasts?" I ask as I point to the most obvious pair of tits in the whole damn clinic. I mean, my GOD, these things were the size of Thai watermelons and drooped like a basset hound's ears. You could NOT miss them. Especially since they were framed so nicely by damp breast pads.

So I settled in on my back. And there he had me lay while he fiddle faddled with his equipment and who knows what else. As I sat there, being post partum and all, I could feel the ummm... well... the post partum blood dripping down my back. I'm sure as a man, a single man at that, he had no clue that after one has a baby one bleeds like a river flowing through Egypt. And when on your back, that blood doesn't flow nicely into the pad placed carefully in the underwear for collection purposes. No, no, gravity simply just doesn't work that way. It flows straight down the crack of your ass and unless you're wearing a diaper, it soaks through your panties creating a snake like looking stain on the back of your pants.

If he had adjusted me as soon as I laid down, I'd have been okay. But I was laying flat for well over five minutes. Feeling the flow, I decided to sit up, which given the distastrous state of my abdominal muscles meant a really unique maneuver I refer to as the swing-shift-push. You swing your legs over, shift your weight, and then push up with your hands. It's like a sit up without the actual use of your abs. And it creates somewhat of a scene.

"Just lay back," he snapped. And so I did, destined to an afternoon of stain sticking the only pair of jeans that fit my pathetically post partum figure.

He did the adjustment and then finished off with a popping pressure gun thingy to my neck. I don't know what that thing is supposed to do, but it did nothing but scare the dilly will out of me.

He gave me a list of instructions.

"Don't sleep with any pillows. Lay flat. Use ice three times a day. Do some gentle stretches, but don't move your neck around a lot. Don't hold your baby."

I laughed.

"I'm serious. You cannot hold your baby."

I laughed again, but with the slowly dawning realization that he wasn't kidding.

"You cannot make like this," he said as he demonstated a cradle hold.

"I have to. I have to feed her."

"Let your husband hold her while you feed her."

Now, if you heard this after having just given birth two days before what would you do? I'll tell you what this weird bird did. I laughed the laugh of a lunatic while tears streamed down my face. I was sobbing and laughing and I must have looked a complete mess.

"Yeah, okay. Yeah. Right," I laughed.

Then I got serious. Darkly, meanly serious.

"I get it. You are my doctor. You are telling me what is best for me. But I am the mother of a 2 day old baby. I'd have to be cold and dead before I wouldn't hold my baby."

And so ended our visit.

Then I was handed the bill. A bill of $250 plus $40 for the popping gun to the neck treatment. The harrassment and hassle were free. Lucky me.

I went back there two more times. Primarily to announce to all the women patients in the waiting area that Dr. Dumbass had advised me to not pick up my 2 day old baby. By the time I was through with him, he was the butt end of a lot of jokes, especially from the blue hairs. God love 'em.

So I leave to find greener pastures... or at least nicer chiros.