No Love for Chiro

So, because I am apparently trapped in the body of a 90-year-old woman, I started going to a chiropractor because I am having low back pain, combined with the joy of shooting sciatic nerve pain. Add that to the PT I'm going to for the knee, and I'm seeing almost as many medical professionals as my grandmother, who actually IS going to be 90 on Tuesday.

Today marked the 5th appointment with the chiropractor. The first appointment was a consultation with x-rays. I met the chiropractor and his associate. From there, my next three appointments, I was with just the chiropractor. The associate, whose name I am not sure of, was "around," but I didn't have any contact with him, although he waved at me once when I was in the office.

Workout, Schmurkout

As everyone knows who has been around me for even a tiny bit of time, I love to run. Love. it. I pay money to run (which confuses my poor husband, who doesn't understand the lure of the race... he just sees it as paying money for something I do for free most of the time.)

I will tell you what though. Lately, it just isn't going so well.

And by "not well," I mean, I am not only riding the struggle bus, not even DRIVING the struggle bus, I am the bug on the windshield of the struggle bus, baked on by the sun and won't come off even with the windshield wipers going full-blast and the misters used repeatedly.

Splat.

That's me.

Chompers

I went to the dentist today.

I really don't like going to the dentist.

I know, who does? The one redeeming part about the dentist is that wonderful, lead-lined blanket they drape over you when they take x-rays. I want to stay under that weight forever... except maybe today, because I started wondering just what the heck they were taking pictures of in there. Seriously, it was like 10 x-rays, and I only have 28 teeth!

What I really don't like is the lecture. I'm sure you know the one, you know, about flossing? I am convinced that there isn't a single person in America who doesn't work in a dentist's office that flosses enough. My hygienist, probably because I am a new patient, really laid in on thick today. On, and on, and on about the floss! Seriously, I am nearly 35 years old, no cavities, and every dentist I've ever been to tells me I have "pretty teeth," which I don't really understand, but I'm assuming is good, and so I'm thinking that what I'm doing is more or less working for me. I frankly, highly doubt that your lecture, or the lecture of ten's of dental hygienists before you, will make me change my habits, or lack thereof.

The woman then had the nerve to say, "well, you've got some bleeding in your gum here." I'm sorry, but did you NOT notice that you just punched my gums with a 16th century instrument of torture, and then scraped along the gum line? I don't think any amount of flossing is going to toughen those babies up to the Teflon-levels they would need to be to withstand that crap.

I'm not kidding you, when the dentist finally arrived, she looked in my mouth and went, "hmm, looks like you cut the roof of your mouth." Me? Again, stainless steel devices that are likely used at Guantanamo and illegal under UN interrogation charters, and I cut my mouth?

Then she thought she saw something on one of the x-rays. However, that "something" was so small, she had to take the record to another screen and blow it up to see anything. She came back and declared that the vague shadow on tooth 13 (don't ask me which that is, I don't label them) has a cavity.

Are you sure? I don't feel anything? No discomfort, no pain.

Yep, cavity. Well, the start of one. Maybe if you floss more...

D#*m.

Come back Tuesday and we'll put some <insert technical word for what I heard, which I swear was "white paint">> on it.

Where's the floss?