The Mr's first experience with my chiro

Today y'all get a break from my droning on and get to hear from the Mr.  You've heard me talk about his shoulder injury and while there has been improvement, I felt it might be time for him to go to my chiro to speed things along.  Here's how his first ever visit to the chiropractor went.

When I was a kid I asked my dad (may he rest in peace) what a chiropractor was. While I don't specifically recall the exact verbiage he used, I remember it was something along the lines of witch doctor or quack. I never questioned my dad when I was a kid but as I grew older and realized what a prolific bullshitter my dad actually was (no offense here dad.)  I began to question some of those assumptions I had grown up believing. That being said I never had a need to go to a chiropractor so I never really got the chance to form my own opinion. That is, until yesterday.

When the Mrs. first came down with her tarsal tunnel syndrome, I was obviously on board with the idea of going to a podiatrist. That’s their specialty after all, right? But not long after that visit (looking back, thankfully it didn’t take us a long time to figure this out) it became fairly obvious that the podiatrist was the quack, at least from our experience. But I won’t go too much into that detail and I mean no disrespect to perfectly good podiatrists out there, we just obviously got a really bad one. Because of getting that bad podiatrist, The Mrs. decided to look at other options. I have to say when she first mentioned going to a chiropractor I was on board with anything that would relieve her from the pain she was going through.  In my mind, I may have thought something along the lines of “aren’t those guys just money grubbing witch doctors?” But she was in need of some real relief and with what she was reading about the potential help she could get from the right chiropractor, it seemed not only worth a try but like it might actually be the answer.

Well it was. She has raved about her doctor for a couple of years now and I have to say I’ll have to remember to thank him next time I see him because he has done wonders for her and I appreciate it. He has also inadvertently helped me a lot over the years because it seems that as you learn about proper muscle massage techniques and procedures, you quickly end up needing them somehow, funny how that is, huh?

So anyway, I was paddle boarding happily one day about 3 weeks ago and we were exploring this really cool area that, as it turns out, was a bit on the shallow side. I could see some tree stumps sticking out and I always know to be a bit careful because my board has a 6 inch fin on the bottom that I’ve often wondered about. As in, what would happen if that got caught on something? Well, I sure found out quickly! It got caught on a tree root (I assume anyway, I never actually did see the thing, who knows maybe I inadvertently found Jimmy Hoffa) and the board stopped while I kept going forward – nothing like real life physics lessons.  My first thought was that I didn’t really feel like getting wet so maybe I could brace my fall. The answer to that question should always be no in case you ever find yourself in such situations. I still got wet and I injured my shoulder pretty badly. What’s worse is I still had to get back on my board (shout out to the Mrs. for helping me with that) and then paddle 2.5 miles back to the car.

That first night I could barely move but here I am 3 weeks later and thankfully it’s much better than it was thanks to consistent icing and ultra sound.  But I still wanted to know exactly what was going on there so that I can make sure I do the right things to get it healed up properly. So today I finally got to meet my wife’s chiropractor.  I have to admit that as I was sitting there in the lobby I was really unsure as to what was going to happen. Was he going to pull my arm back and crack my spine or something? 

How was he even going to know what was actually wrong?

My mind was quickly put at ease as he greeted me and brought me and the Mrs. back to his office. He had me stand and face him at first and right from the start I realized just how much he was able to assess just by looking at a person. This is a person who knows muscle and bone structures so well that they can tell exactly how you might be feeling based solely on posture. He had me do some arm raises so he could see how bad my range of motion was affected and I was relieved when he said that it was actually pretty good given the type of injury. I also told him about an old football injury in my shoulder and he quickly assessed that that injury was actually aggravating everything else going on, which is along the lines of what I felt but didn’t know how to put into words.

He did a lot of different muscle release procedures that made it clear that he knows what he’s doing and the whole time he was making sure that he wasn’t hurting me or causing any further damage to the muscles involved. I was very relieved when he said I just have a sprain and not a tear or anything worse. So all in all I was very impressed. He was a great and knowledgeable guy! No wizardry going on at all, with the exception of a cold laser that, from what he and the Mrs. tells me, does a great job of healing things up fast. If at his next assessment Thursday he feels the laser hasn't significantly helped me, then he'll use a mega ultrasound on me but said the laser helps 70% of shoulder issues.  

It was such a relief to know that I didn’t do any major damage and that I am already on a good path to healing. It was a great experience going to the chiropractor and I highly recommend it to anyone who may be on the fence. 

====================
Like this post? Don't miss another one...subscribe via email or RSS feed. (Or you can follow me on Facebook )