Memories, Scars and Survival: High School Years

Chapter 40 - Einar

The adjustments didn't feel that bad. The doctor brought me back and tested my balance, reflexes, and some other things. To start, he made me lie on my stomach on the table. Then he used a large massage gun on my back.

It felt quite nice until he worked on my hips and shoulders. After doing that, he moved my feet together and told me he was checking the alignment of my legs. I guess my right leg was hanging down over an inch lower than my left.

He put his hands on my hips and I heard his foot kick a pedal over and over as the table lifted and then fell as he pushed down sharply on my hips. I wasn't sure he even did anything, but he held my feet together again and pronounced them as being even again.

From there, he moved his hands, starting again at my waist and adjusted my spin every inch or more up to my neck. The most painful was in my center back. It hurt a lot but also took my breath away. The most obvious change was in my neck.

He did his thing twice on one side and once in the other direction. Each time, my neck must have cracked three or more times. I thought he might be done, but he began feeling around my shoulders, upper arms.

In the end, he cracked all my fingers, toes, wrists, ankles, elbows, knees, and my shoulders. Of those, the only ones that hurt were my wrists. When he finally let me go, I needed to rub my wrists and move them around.

But not even the pain of the adjustment to my center back was nearly as bad as the pain from the massage. As soon as the massage therapist showed me to his room, he stepped outside and told me to strip to my comfort level. I'm glad I wore my gym shorts under my pants.

When he came back in, I was laying face down under a heated blanket on the table. He seemed like a very nice man. He spoke to me the entire time and narrated what he was doing and telling me the names of the muscles he was working on.

Everything was great until he began working on my neck and shoulders. Until he worked on me, I never knew how tense I was. As he dug into the sides of my shoulders, I moaned and tried to pull away several times.

He dug in certain spots and held the pressure several times. If that pain wasn't bad, the absolute worse pain I may have ever felt was when he dug into the sides of my upper chest and into my armpit area. He apologized but said he needed to do it.

"You will feel so much better once these muscles release," he said.

After that, he asked me to flip over. He reached over me to lift the other side of the blanket up for me to spin around. The way he held it was to ensure my privacy.

He began massaging my hands, forearms, and upper arms. I worried he would massage deep into the top of my shoulder again. Instead, he pressed into my chest below the clavicle. He promised he wasn't pressing that hard, but it was burning in pain.

It became too much, and he moved onto another area. But it didn't get better. He moved my left arm and rested it on his shoulder as he sat next to me. Several times, he moved my arm in different directions as he tried to massage different areas.

He was becoming frustrated as my arm kept falling asleep as he attempted to massage different things in my pectoral muscles. Once he realized it's going to fall asleep regardless, he told me to let it happen.

"Were you in an accident? You have so much tension and scar tissue here?" he asked while lightly feeling around my ribcage.

"I was kicked with steel-toed boots under that arm." I didn't elaborate any more than that.

As he began pressing in between my ribs, I almost fell off the table as I jumped away from the shock of the pain. All that stopped me was him grabbing my upper arm and holding me back.