dianaschnuth

Today’s follow-up was at 6pm, which gave me time to see Aaron, change clothes and feed the cat before heading back out to see Dr. Sue.

Dr. Sue was a few minutes late, due to her son’s senior pictures running longer (or being more difficult) than expected. She rolled up in her minivan just as I was starting to get a little worried about my appointment. When I realized that she’d driven to the office just for me, I thought that was pretty damn cool. She could have said she couldn’t see me today, and scheduled me for some other time. That was mighty considerate of her, I thought.

The session didn’t take quite as long this time, and she noticed right away that my back must be feeling a lot better than it was. She was right; all weekend, all I had were twinges here and there when I bent the wrong way or tried to take too big of a step. The routine was the same as before: moist heat, cracking the neck and upper back, stretching the lower back, ultrasound therapy, and one last neck crack. That got me to feeling almost normal.

I did ask her about her normal price for a visit, and she said it’s $25. She also said that my insurance probably wouldn’t pay for most of it. I told her that Aaron’s visits with Dr. Smith are mostly paid for by insurance, so hopefully these will be, too. I’m going to take care of my co-pay at my next (and hopefully final) visit on Saturday morning at 10:00, so I’m hoping she actually runs my insurance through, instead of assuming the worst.

My back feels like I worked out a little hard. That’s all. It doesn’t hurt like it did — there’s just some muscular soreness. I’m sure that will go away over the course of this week.

Now I need to get back into my exercise routine. I’ve become adept at finding things to watch on TV for the past week, while I was beached on the couch, nursing my back. I’m itching to get active again — which I would never have expected. I mean, I’ve continued to take my lunchtime walks, but I’ve been missing how I feel after a real workout. I did a few upper body exercises with my resistance bands, and did a few ab exercises. None of those seemed to bother my back, which is good. Maybe tomorrow I can try doing a full-on PUSH workout, and just skip past anything that feels like it might hurt (in a bad way — either my knee or my lower back).

Oh, yeah, did I mention that my right knee felt like shit over the weekend? I have no idea what I did, besides walking funny to favor my back, but my knee hurt like a bitch. When I got up to go to work today, it was perfectly fine. WTF?

I’m taking photos and measurements on July 14, in preparation for a renewed phase of my goddamn weight loss plan. I’m going to do this thing, goddammit. I’m sick of kicking ass, then ceasing to kick ass for whatever bullshit reason, then having to kick ass twice as hard to get back to where I was. This is bullshit, and being forced into being sedentary last week really made me see it. I’m going to lose 20 pounds in 15 weeks. By Halloween (preferably sooner), I intend to weight 190. Or be under 30% bodyfat.

(How many pounds of fat would be 4% of my total weight, assuming I were to gain muscle in the process? I don’t even know how to begin calculating that. How much does 20 pounds of fat weigh? —Never mind. Forget I asked that. *smacks forehead*)

I wonder if I could go jogging again yet?

Had my very first chiropractor visit this evening after work. I declare it a success… if a bit more expensive than Dr. Smith would have been.

I located the building with no problem (apart from irking the guy in the car behind me, who wanted to drive just a little faster). It was, in fact, right across from the Mango Tree restaurant, as promised. Parked the car in the lot behind the building, walked in, and found Dr. Hendricks’ door just inside. I wasn’t prepared for the small receptionist-less waiting room. There was one other man waiting there, and I asked him if I needed to let anyone know I was there. He was friendly, thankfully, and told me that Dr. Hendricks would come out and get me when she was ready. Which she did.

She came out in a polo shirt and shorts. No name tag, no white lab coat, none of that. I told her I was there to see Dr. Hendricks, and she said she was Dr. Hendricks. Casual, low-key, friendly. OK. She gave me paperwork to fill out, then disappeared back behind one of two doors to finish up with her previous patient.

When the patient before me was done, Dr. Sue (as I heard that patient call her) gestured me in. I took off my shirt and put on a back-fastening gown, then laid face-down on the table. She felt along my spine, starting at my neck, all the way down and back up. She identified tense areas I didn’t even know were there — but, once I thought about it, I realized that my neck *does* tend to be a little tense. She mentioned later during the session that it seemed as if this was a long time coming, and the weekend of painting just set my lower back over the edge.

Hopefully I’m not revealing any trade secrets here… She put moist, hot cloths on my neck and lower back, and left them there for a few minutes. Then she took them off my neck and adjusted my neck (that is, gave it a good twist so it popped better than I can ever do). After that, she cracked my upper back — and oooohhhhh, that felt soooo good. I haven’t had a good back-cracking in years. (I figured it might be a good idea not to mention my family’s penchant for back-cracking to the chiropractor, though.)

Then she removed the heat from my lower back and made the back half of the table move around. It was like she was circling my legs around from the hips, stretching out my lower back. That felt pretty good, too. After that, she did ultrasound therapy on my lower back, which felt oddly tingly and was supposed to be loosening and relaxing those muscles. Then she had me flip onto my back so she could properly crack my neck (ohhhh, yeah).

Then I was done. The visit took about a half hour, and I feel much better having done it.

As I was getting ready to leave, I asked her how much I owed her. She said she wasn’t sure, because she didn’t know how my insurance worked. I told her I thought it was an 80-20 thing, so she had me pay her $25, which is much more than Dr. Smith would have cost for a visit. I’m still betting that she just didn’t know how my insurance worked, and that I got overcharged for this visit. No way can she really be three times as expensive as Dr. Smith.

Now, two hours later, my back feels better than it has all week, but still considerably tighter than when I left Dr. Sue’s office.

I have a follow-up appointment on Monday evening at 6pm. I’m looking forward to it.