So I’d been having intermittent bouts of stabbing pain in my left hip for a couple of weeks… no, really, stabbing — the sensation seems a lot like having someone jab me with an icepick. Anyway, I finally decided last Friday that I would call a friend of mine from choral union who is a chiropractor. Unlike a “real” doctor, apparently a chiropractor (this one, anyway) can see you THAT VERY DAY. So I went in and his assistant took X-rays. Damn, is my spine bent. I’ve got scoliosis. Bad. But, what the hell. As my chiropractor friend said, this is something I’ve had a long time, and I seem to have adapted to it.
He did think he could do something about the hip pain, though. So I lay on a padded table, and he lifted one leg and then the other, and sort of wiggled them around a bit, and then he took a little spring-loaded hammer thingy and went *whack* *whack* *whack* in a few spots in my hip and lower back, and I got up and he said “Come back on Monday.”
I was sort of puzzled — this wasn’t what I’d expected, although I then looked it up on the web and “instrument adjustment” is used by a lot of chiropractors nowdays, apparently. More to the point, I rode 100 miles the next day (the Indian Crossing Century) with only one small twinge of the former stabbing pain. Sunday also, one small incident of pain there, and Monday ditto. Monday he used the spring-loaded spine whacker (or SLSW) on me again, and said to come back on Wednesday.
I had no pain between then and Wednesday, and when I went back, he just did some leg-wiggling, and then said that he’d never seen anybody respond so quickly, and he was really amazed. And to come back next week so he could check it, but it looks like I’m done.
Considering that what I’ve always heard about chiropractors is that they want you to keep coming in forever, I’m astonished. Also pretty damn happy that I feel so much better so quickly.