Assupuncture
Note: I had originally wanted to call this essay 250lbs of Rape, but my editor didn’t think it was a good idea. My wife didn’t either.
I have a bad back. I’ve been told it’s hereditary, and from what I can gather, that’s about 100% true. Back pain is a funny thing. Not funny ha-ha, but funny in that everyone who suffers from back pain likes to share their stories about it to other sufferers.
I’m not one of those people.
Not only do I not care about other people’s pain, but also I really dislike discussing my problem. I don’t like talking about it, I don’t like thinking about it, and I really dislike the shit that I had to go through to get upright.
But it happens. People want to share, and give you suggestions as to what helped them, and what you should try. At my worst, I was at a point that I could literally not move at all. I looked and felt like I had been through 2 tours of the Clone Wars, and there were no droid parts to fix me up.
I tried Chiropractic, but every time I went, they wanted me to watch a video on good Chiropractic care, and for chrissakes, after the 3rd viewing I wanted to take a hostage. The place I went to required that every patient attend a wellness class on good back & neck health in order to be treated. I took Max with me, and we sat down for this class in folding metal chairs…just the thing for people who are having serious mobility problems. The first slide in this quacks presentation was about finding the most comfortable chair, that aids a healthy back and neck, and he has us sitting in these cold metal chairs leftover from the Nixon administration.
Medication helps, but for someone like me, who gets addicted to television shows, after a while, it didn’t seem like a great idea. I guess they’re fun, but I have the tolerance of an African Forest Elephant, so they never really did anything for me.
Everything came to a head for me, though, when someone suggested acupuncture. I don’t believe in a lot of holistic practices, let alone jagging needles in you to help ease pain, but I was at a point where I’d try anything to get out of pain. As usual, I had the parade of people extolling the virtues of it, and as I said, I was ready for something. I had no idea what that something was.
In my office building, I had seen a sign for an acupuncturist that had recently moved in, and contrary to popular belief, I actually like helping people, especially new businesses in the area. I made the appointment, and arrived on time. The “Doctor” who was there to “assist me” in my healing process was a pale guy named Jason, and he hid in the corner, crouched over like he was looking for his precious. He had the most spectacular speech impediment that I have ever heard in my life, that I can only describe by saying his tongue was probably 3 sizes too big for his mouth. He wasn’t alone, there was another “doctor” in the back who hadn’t made an entrance yet, who I can only describe as Nathan Lane in the Birdcage. We’ll come back to him.
So Jason takes me into a room, where they’re not playing soothing Asian instrumentals, but they’re playing Britney Spears. He tells me the cost, and begins scurrying around looking for something (again, I assumed his precious). When he can’t find it after 10 excruciating minutes of me standing there, he informs me he’s looking for a towel.
“Do we have any towels?” he screams over the room divider.
“Only paper!” comes the voice from over the divider.
“That’ll do!”
Just then a roll of Bounty paper towels comes hurling over the divider that hits Jason right in the shoulder, and onto the floor. It was closer to me, so Jason asked me to pick it up. Me. The guy with the fucking back problem. I tell him that I really can’t bend down, and I’m starting to wonder about all this nonsense. I’ve never done this before, and I’m still unsure of whether or not this is normal practice. I assume at this point that he’s going to use the paper towels to wipe down the table.
“Ok, so get undressed, and use these to cover your bottom.”
So I’m supposed to strip, waist down, and attempt to cover my ass with paper towels, while laying face down. I’m sure I mentioned that I’m in excruciating pain right? Jason leaves so that I can undress and attempt this covering up process without screaming in pain. Somehow I pull it off, and I yell over the divider that I’m ready.
I’m ready. Words cannot express how wrong that was.
I’m lying face down on a leather table, with my face through the hole, and my ass covered in Bounty, and he decides this is a good time to explain how acupuncture works. I have to turn my head out of the hole and, seem very interested in the process he’s about to do, even though it’s killing me. His discussion goes on for a while; at which point he tells me that he’s ready to begin. I counted the needles he stuck in me, and I lost count at around 274. I understood there were pressure points in different parts of the body that I know nothing about, so I kept my mouth shut. After they were all in, he then proceeds to explain to me that he’s going to hookup the electrodes to certain needles (which he did NOT tell me about). Connecting about 45 needles to a current, he proceeded to tell me that I was now “hooked up” and I needed to “stew” for 20 minutes.
Twenty of the longest minutes of my life later…
Jason comes back into the room and begins to remove all 600 needles. As he’s doing this, he tells me of a new experimental therapy that he’s going to do to me called “Slap Therapy”. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s because it doesn’t fucking exist. Slap Therapy involves removing paper towels from your ass, and having someone slap your ass, on the opposite of the pain side, as hard as physically possible, repeatedly for another 20 minutes. After that he tells me to get dressed, that I’m “good to go”, and there’s one more therapy he wants to try. My mind went right to “Rectum Therapy”, but thankfully this one was known as “Twist Therapy”.
With 4 needles in each hand, I was required to pretend it was 1959 and twist while I had these needles stuck in me. “Just keep twisting, I’ll tell you when to stop.” Like I said I went into this lunatic’s office in excruciating pain, and now, I’m in more pain, I have holes in me, and I’m dancing. He removes the needles, tells me I may feel lightheaded, and walks me out to the waiting room.
Enter Nathan Lane. Big hat. Scarf.
Fabulous.
“Do you feel better?”
“Not really”, I said, “I actually feel a little worse.”
“That’s normal”, he tells me, “you’ll start to feel better in a few hours. So, like Jason said, the cost is $90 for this session.” Knowing this in advance, I take out my credit card, and hand it to Jason, who tells me that he can’t accept credit cards, because he’s new. I offer to write him a check, and this is where all logic went out the window.
“Can you get us cash? There’s an ATM about a block down the street, can you take a walk down there and get us cash?”
Walk? Fucking walk? I can just about stand up, and you want me to walk down the block? The whole reason I’m fucking here is because I can’t walk.
I just wanted out of there, so I hobbled to the car, drove down the block and got the cash. When I went back in, Jason thought it was a good idea to count the money right in front of me. Didn’t this guy ever hear The Gambler? What, was I going to stiff him cash and then run out of there before he noticed? I can’t even walk out of there.
So I bailed. They wanted to setup a follow-up appointment, but I just wanted to get the Christ out of there. I tried explaining to my wife that the red hand prints were from Slap Therapy, but I don’t think she bought it. Add to the fact that not only could I not walk, but I couldn’t sit down made for an even more miserable experience.
Eventually I had surgery to “correct” my problem. I put “correct” in quotes, because, as I was to later find out, according to a medical professional “You’re just messed up” and there’s nothing I can really do to solve the problem. I can walk upright, but sometimes I’m bent over like the middle guy in those progression of man drawings you see when you study early man.
What’s funny is that I had en epiphany the other day, when I realized what might have caused my initial injury. I had a fleeting remembrance of trying to impress someone in Catholic school, with a Three Stooges bit. I was wearing a backpack that was completely full of bibles, holy water, and sin, so it weighed in at about 30 pounds. I wanted to do a bit where I fell backwards on to my back, and I did it forgetting that I was wearing the bag. I also did it on the concrete, which didn’t help.
The bit worked fine, and I got a laugh, but I’m pretty sure that was the beginning of my trouble.
