Pretty much anything that makes my back make a godawful noise is a good thing.
Today I went to the chiropractor. Now that I have access to my Wisconsin HMO again, I am trying to take full advantage.
The chiropractor is about half a mile from my house, and she did awesome things to my back. She confirmed that my neck and shoulders are fucked up, but she assured me that they are fucked up in a way that is common to people who spend a lot of time at computers and that she can fix me. Then she made my back make loud noises but rubbed my neck more sedately, because she was afraid of causing me to have a stroke.* Then she hooked me up to a MACHINE with ELECTRODES that rub your muscles. It was very Return to Oz or something.
I didn’t have to pay anything, and I get to go back next week. My insurance is pretty awesome. Although it probably doesn’t pay for therapeutic massage, but I might get some anyway. We’ll see.
Afterwards, I stopped off at the drugstore by my house, which is also a costume shop and sells wine. It’s pretty much my ideal retail establishment. They also have limited postal service, but they don’t send international packages over a pound, so I couldn’t ship my eBay shoes to Canada. They did, however, have a wide selection of brightly colored wigs, and the greatest selection of crazy sunglasses that I have ever seen. I put together quite the birthday present for my pseudo-goddaughter. Even my own heart-shaped sunglasses didn’t have GLITTER on them.
While I was there, two elderly women approached me and raved about my hair. One of them squeezed my hand, which I actually didn’t mind. Often when people are exclaiming about my hair, they try to touch it–since it’s so short, this means that they are basically lunging at my face, which is not awesome. Hand-squeezing is different, especially if you are a matronly older woman. The woman behind the counter looked like an older Ellen Kushner, right down to her taste in clothes. I think I really like this neighborhood.
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*This is a concern when you have a clotting disorder, although I doubt I have any clots hanging around in my neck waiting to kill me at the moment.
September 16th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
The electrode thinger is fantabulous. I wish I had insurance that covered chiropractors. Seriously, rugby as a sport alone supports half of the chiropractors and nearly all of the orthopedists in this country; imagine the business being a chiropractor and/or an orthopedist in a country like New Zealand! Oh wait, all major rugby countries have socialized medicine. I think I smell a correlation…
On a totally random and different topic, I hate it when people randomly squeeze parts of my body. I was at this book reading, by a father of an autistic boy who wrote a book about his experiences (the father is a journalist). Anyway, after the reading I go up to him to talk about his experience and writing the book and how I was impressed by how he interpretted his son, and these other women (all in their mid-forties and happy to find out he was divorced from his wife) were crowded around him. He and I are having this deep conversation about “cures” for autism (he was def pro-cure; I’m pro-autism - really, everyone should have some) and these women are listening and he asks me why I’m so interested. I reply that I’m an Aspie and suddenly this woman feels the need to like draw me further into the conversation by patting me on the back and pushing me into this circle. Like, awww, you’re not really a 21 year old college senior, double major, honors in sociology… you’re this little autistic who needs to be guided into conversation. GRRR.
So that story had very little to do with your story, but it was a random memory triggered by your story. And now it’s on the internets! Whee!