Appointments
I had my very first visit to a chiropractor last Friday. I went because I had a sudden onset of neck pain and one shoulder being lower than the other. I’m pretty sure I did it to myself with a set of aptly named dumbells. For issues with bone and muscle alignment I believe that the chiropractor is exactly the right person to ask for treatment. Unfortunately every single chiropractor I’ve met or heard about claims to be able to cure all the ills of the human body with proper alignment and sometimes with homeopathy or herbal supplements. I’m leery of taking nutritional advice from a bone and muscle guy. But I had a bone/muscle problem, so I went.
The place I went is essentially a drive thru chiropractor. You walk in, within 5 minutes he’s cracked all the appropriate joints, then he lays you on a mechanical massaging table for 15 minutes. All done. Having my neck cracked was extremely unnerving. According to all the movies I’ve watched when a person has their neck torqued to the side and it goes CRACK, that means the person is now dead. I am not dead, but the back of my brain is convinced that it should have killed me. The neck crack completely solved the neck/shoulder/arm problem I was having. The chiropractor also aligned everything else down my spine. Apparently I’ve been living with one leg shorter than the other. Since that was a longer term tweakage my body was not so happy about the shift. My back has been stiff and sore ever since. The chiropractor warned me that this would be so. The very suspicious part of my brain says that he is smart enough to deliberately disalign my spine and cause me pain to ensure a return visit. A different part of my brain believes the explanation that I’ve grown accustomed to being off balance and the change to balance will hurt. A third part is just griping that I didn’t hurt last week and now I do. I’m still waiting and seeing if the aches and pains will go away. I like the idea of fixing a long term disalignment, but I’m nervous about going back again. I don’t want my neck cracked again. I really don’t.
On the theme of appointments, I took Link to the dentist today. Link has a serious case of shark mouth. Human teeth aren’t supposed to come in rows, but Link’s do because there isn’t enough room in his small jaw for those big grown up teeth. I went to the dentist expecting to be referred to an orthodontist for braces. I also expected to be scolded because Link hasn’t been wearing his dental device (an occlusigude) which is supposed to prevent his teeth from growing in crooked. I think the dentist expected to scold me too, but then he took a look at Link’s mouth. He hmmed. He looked some more. He agreed with me that wearing the occlusiguide would have made the problem worse because the out of place teeth would have been pushed further out of place rather than into place. He looked at Link’s teeth some more. He talked about extracting a few teeth to make more space. He took x-rays. After the x-rays (which showed a veritable pileup of teeth attempting to emerge into the same tiny spots) the dentist brought out a brochure for a company that makes spacing retainers. The theory is that since Link’s jaw is still growing, we can nudge it into growing large enough for his teeth by providing a subtle 24×7 pressure. I agreed that this made sense. The dentist said that this was the most logical next step because he really didn’t want to pull teeth unless it was absolutely necessary. Have I mentioned that I really like this dentist? I forgot that I did because it has been so long since I’ve taken the kids in. But I like that he believes in preventative care rather than teenage braces.
So we made impressions of Link’s teeth. He thought that was pretty cool. Then I made the delightful discovery that we have enough of a credit at the dentist’s office left over from fully insured Novell days, that we didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket for this set of retainers. Now I just need to train Link not to lost them or break them while he is at school.