I don’t like pain. Any pain. I’m that person that gets a paper cut and needs a week convalescent leave. I don’t know how I managed to give birth to three children. I definitely don’t like going to doctors or staying in hospitals. I’m afraid of doctors because there’s usually pain involved. So, for about 18 months I’ve been tolerating back pain from my neck to my lower back. The pain in my neck (not my husband) was causing shooting pain to radiate down my left arm.
My husband kept telling me to see a doctor. I wasn’t having that because I didn’t want to get pills that didn’t solve the problem or go well with wine. Finally, he convinced me to go see a chiropractor. That took a few months though and he watched and listened as I made an appointment. Dr. Andrea Hailey in the booming metropolis of Waynesboro, Virginia – friends of mine from my pharmacy said they’d heard good things about her.
Many people have told me how they frequently go to chiropractors. They would start to explain how great they felt after an adjustment and hearing their bones go back into place. That’s when they lost me. Hearing my bones crack does not sit well with me. As far as adjustments go, that’s something that’s done to an automobile. I checked my book on the history of punishment and all the torture devices used throughout time. I was certain I was going to be on or in one of those torture devices. This was my image of chiropractors and I was wrong.
My husband and daughter wanted to go with me for the entertainment value. They wanted to hear me start screaming before I even entered the office. I went alone. As I waited, I got more nervous and could feel anxiety through pain. Just as I was going to leave, here came Dr. Hailey. She’s a lovely, slender woman with an angelic voice. That made me nervous too. Was it really angelic or a demon that would turn as soon as I went into the torture room?
I started rambling about what I thought was wrong, how long it had been going on, that I was nervous and afraid, and maybe I had spine cancer. Dr. Hailey let me ramble. When I finally paused, she explained what chiropractors do and that she is a doctor. She could tell if something needed attention by another doctor including cancer. I tried paying attention and got bits and pieces. She explained that either through trauma, as in an automobile accident, or time, our bones start adapting to what we do such as not sit correctly in front of a computer screen. In my case, I just need adjustments to get them working right again because I’m older, I think. She never said old.
Dr. Hailey had me sold until she made the metaphor that going to a chiropractor for the first time is like going to a dentist for the first time in my 55 years. I panicked. I saw the “Marathon Man” too many times. Dustin Hoffman gets good teeth mangled by a psycho Nazi dentist. I wanted to start yelling, “It’s safe!” (reference the film). She continued, in her angelic voice, to explain what she was going to do, how she was going to do it, and when. Whew! That’s a lot of doing.
She did her thing. She twisted me around a little, explained everything, I heard bones popping, and I felt great. She said for this to work I needed to come back a few more times. Not a problem at all if I feel this good.
I still can’t believe I actually went because I’m such a wimp. I went three times already and I’m going again. Her method is working. I have no more shooting pains and my back pain is starting to subside. I pay attention to how I sit. I put my history of punishment book away. I’m not afraid. The next time I get a paper cut I’m going to see Dr. Hailey.
Column by Linda R. Jones
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