They were easy on me the first week, perhaps a little too easy. The worried staff wondered if they would overwork me and consequently trigger an excruciating trigeminal attack. The opening exercises were easy; it felt like it was going to be a total milk run during the first week of this so called intense neck rehabilitation.
My exercises were all completed and I waited to be put into traction, but first I had to enter a little room. It was innocently looking enough. A maroon and a burgundy table with big plushy beds sat parallel to each other. Don’t be deceived, I would soon find out that those are the torture beds. Patients like to call it the torture chamber. Me? I call it the Little Room of Horrors.
The doctor walked in sporting a half crazed smile. It reminded me of the Cheshire cat. “Ready B?!?!?” he excitedly asked still wearing that crazed smile. He clapped and rubbed his malevolent hands together before motioning to one of the beds of deep red.
He’s sadistic. He takes great joy in inflicting pain on his patients. He tells you to relax your neck, and cracks it. If it’s not loud enough he’ll do it again! While you’re lying on the bed in misery he’ll use it as a distraction to tell you to move your head. You’ll do it and he’ll crack the other side! “Oh, that was good!” he’ll exclaim as he again claps his most malevolent hands while you writhe in agony on the table.
Split seconds later he’s giving your neck a karate chop! He victoriously pumps his hands into the air as you slowly retreat into the fetal position. You’re too busy praying to notice him grabbing his crony arthrostim. The tool is nothing more than a miniaturized industrial jackhammer; all designed to maximize your pain experience. He’ll use it to pummel your poor back. Oh the perfidy!
He’ll stop and tell you to get up. I can confess that you’ll be too woozy to resist and succumb because you think it’s the end. It’s the end alright, the end of your sanity. His hand will cup your chin and he’ll pull you back into the demented tool of his. Fiery streaks of fire rip through your rib cavity as he continues to pummel your back and then neck.
You’re a mindless walking zombie now. You won’t remember shaking his hand, being banished to the rack, or anything else that transpired in the room. His assistant will lead you to the rack and put you into traction where you will mercifully enter a state of Zen. Total peace as your neck is being bowed in the direction that God designed it to.
Unfortunately I can’t reveal his name. I was tricked into silence when I signed the contract. I didn’t fully read the fine print, forgot to bring my electron microscope with me. However, I can tell you that he played football for a Florida high school with the initials of VB, went on to play for some college named UCF, and now wears polo shirts of those schools as he practices in a sleepy town on the eastern coast of Florida. If you see him…RUN!
