Chiropractor Visit

When your lower back occasionally pranks you into being unable to sit up in bed, unable to do a simple back-bend, or unable to be massaged without eliciting a miserable wailing sound from the patient, it's a swell time to consider professional help.

Nowadays new patients can save precious time by completing new patient forms online. Because of this at-home convenience, it is also possible to ask hundreds of questions such as:

Do you have diabetes? What type?
Do you drink caffeine? How often?
Do you have to reach for, push or pull anything in your current job?
Do you tend to sue doctors if they accidentally snap a vertebrae?

It's easy to get excited too about the disclaimer that the information on the form will not be saved if the session ends midway through, such as by power outage, spilling a glass of water on the console, or falling asleep during question #93.

After twenty minutes I was pleased to finish this just before leaving for the appointment. Had I not gotten it done, then the twenty minutes I spent in the waiting room could not have been spent staring blankly at a brochure on something or other.

For the next thirty minutes I leaned, laid, squatted, and stretched in various positions designed officially to help with the diagnosis, and realistically to amuse the doctor, which is understandable due the lack of clowns available. I also got to answer questions that I had already answered on the form, no doubt to catch me in my web of lies in case I was a spy.

Then it was time to move to the X-ray room, de-robe to boxers and a gown (though doc said that I didn't need the gown when she entered, which is understandable due to the lack of scantily-clad male models available). I was measured at the chest, waist and hips (possibly for the web site, in case they later hired me to be a male model) and then exposed to presumably non-lethal doses of radiation that caused the doc to hide behind a wall and peer at me through a window.

I was asked to return in two days, at which time I'll either receive a helpful diagnosis for my back, be hired as a clown/acrobat/model, or be asked to complete a new patient form. Either way I'm psyched.