A fall down stairs as a teenager, a fall as an old girl, plus bursitis in my shoulders and a resulting operation on one shoulder, my sewing hobby and an office job ….. mean that I do tend to have a bad back.  I know its poor posture, weak under-exercised muscles, and my own bad habits that contribute to this.  And so every so often I end up with a sore back, specifically my shoulders. Ignore it for long enough (and yep, I am spectacularly good at ignoring stuff), and I get this wonderful situation where my entire ribcage feels on fire, and I think I am having a heart attack.
which I am obviously not …… but it feels like it.  I have two options …. physio or a chiropractor. Chiro worked well in Queensland, and the combination of that, plus constant lifting of a toddler who was very happy to not walk anywhere, meant that I had enough upper body strength to keep my spine straight.   But coming down here, falling down a set of stairs, and my boy growing up, has meant that my shoulders again played up. So I tried the physio route. And discovered that my muscles are not fond of being massaged. I bruise, get inflamed, and then the back and shoulders get worse, culminating in surgery for bursitis and a spur.
So last week I finally gave in and decided to see a chiropractor. Taking the plunge and trusting someone new is really hard for me, and its doubly hard when that person basically assaults me. I do not like actuators, for the same reason I don’t like being massaged ….. they cause pain and bruise me. I stated this, clearly.
Now, for starters, my back is not bad because I am holding trauma from past operations in my spine.  I have bones, blood vessels. ligaments and muscles in my back. Last time I looked, no emotions.  My back is bad because I have poor working posture.  Waiting until I am lying face down on a bed, sneaking up on me and zapping an actuator just behind my ear, is just asking for a lawsuit. The damn thing caused a searing pain across my skull, made my forehead and jaw ache for hours, sent a involuntary spasm through my entire body, and caused me to burst into tears. That then rattled me for the rest of the appointment, and I couldn’t think clearly enough to refuse the 10 or so times he used the damn actuator on me. I do however, have bruises on my back and chest from it.   I don’t get what was wrong with a good old fashioned manual adjustment. I may be sensitive, but I am not fragile, I won’t break. And finally follow it up with some waffle about a homoeopathic remedy to help me with my feelings of vulnerability.   All well and good except I will probably have a life threatening allergic reaction to the alcohol base that’s used in it.
So, my thought is this. What is it with alternative practitioners? that they feel they have to justify their treatments by applying all sorts of hocus pocus, and semi-magical meaning to what they do? I would love to go to a chiropractor that said to me, “you have poor posture, your muscles are weak, and this treatment has been shown to be beneficial.” The same goes for naturopaths. I have no belief in energy flows, and certainly in homoeopathic remedies, which have no scientific basis whatsoever.  Do we as customers, actually feed this industry, looking for all sorts of solutions to issues that really are to do with our own mental wellbeing, and nothing to do with our physical condition. Is it us that is looking for a cure-all, without effort?
