I'm brokened

Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.

(They, incidentally, are not chiropractors.)

On a free-toothbrush-and-free-but-shitty-backrub induced high, I left the health fair at work with one of those little appointment cards. "__Kate Surgeon__ has an appointment with __Dr. Goldberg___ at __2pm__ on __October 21__ at Murray Hill Chiropractic," it read, in inocuous little green letters. This man, this Dr. Goldberg, in my mind, was the Prince Charming of Shoulders, here to rescue me from the gobbling maw of Malfunctional Seratus Doom (a.k.a. wikkid chickeny-winged shoulder blades).

Little did I know what additional horrors lay in store for me.

I showed up for my consultation and x-rays wearing a dress. (Oops.) Apparently it's not so much with the legal to do exams on women with no pants, so they put me in this pair of really ugly surgical gown shorts. (Yes, I said "surgical gown shorts.") Imagine, if you will, everything awful about those gowns they give you at the gynecologist (or, if you prefer, the proctologist), and then sew them into a pair of shorts. And then put them on.

So I'm in my burlap shorts and Prince Goldberg asks me what hurts.

"My shoulder, mostly."

(he scribbles notes.)

"Oh, and my hip. I forgot about my hip."

(he scribbles more notes. I flip over.)

"Oh, and my Achille's tendon. I forgot to mention that, because I thought it wasn't relevant."

After I list the three things I think are wrong with me (and really start to feel like an octogenarian), he starts testing me. Poking me here and then there, asking if I felt the difference (usually no), and then moving on to poke me somewhere else. Then he starts warning me that he is going to poke me in some of my more personal areas -- like the outside of my hip! (Please, hasn't he met ex-actors before?)

So just as I think all the tests are over and I can take off these nasty-ass shorts, he puts his hands around my right knee.

"Flex your leg."

I do, and it's fine.

He switches to my left leg.

"Flex this leg."

I do, and things are decidedly not right anymore.

"OW!" I shout, surprised, since my knees haven't hurt since I was 13 and growing faster than they could keep up.

He repositions his hands and says, "Ok, flex again."

"Um, no." I say. "Not if it's going to feel like that again!"

"It won't," he claims, but I'm wary, and very slowly and gingerly flex my leg.

That's when he tells me I have femural-patellar shift. And I didn't even come in here with knee problems! While I was innocently and uncomfortably sitting there in shorts made out of the back side of industrial carpeting, he's given me Runner's Knee.

Rude.

The moral of the story is: Just when you think the chiropractor is a prince who will save you from Pathetically Droopy Shoulder Syndrome, watch out! He will actually give you problems, most likley femoral-patellar shift, a strain in the ligaments around your sartorius muscle (or the "tailor's muscle") and thickened ligaments in your Achille's tendon. Oh, and because he's such a prince, he'll let you keep the retarded shoulder you came in with.

(In his defense, he hasn't cracked a single bone in my body yet, and I think that when he does, I'll forgive him for giving me other old lady diseases.)