Backbone

My back is killing me, and it is George Bush's fault.  

During the halcyon years before Bush assumed the presidency, I had a great chiropractor.   I had been to many chiropractors before, but Dr. B was the only one who could get that one recalcitrant spot in my neck that had been screwed up by car accidents.   He was also good with the lower back and was particularly adept at the maneuver that feels like one's head is being torn from one's body, but in a good way.

My husband and I were friendly with Dr. B and his wife, who would often come hear us when we were doing our singer-songwriter thing, and we always enjoyed seeing them.

But this cordial relationship ground to a halt after the 2000 presidential election when it gradually began to dawn on us that Dr. B and his wife were right-wing zealots.

At first, we weren't sure of this, and furthermore, we didn't care—we just wanted Dr. B to manipulate our spines, and if he had some crazy ideas about politics, that was his business.   But soon it became clear that the B's weren't as comfortable with our obvious disagreements as we were: when my husband started writing anti-Bush songs, they stopped coming to hear us.   During the run-up to the Iraq war, Dr. B started making little comments about weapons of mass destruction while he was cracking our backs.

These comments escalated.   At first, my husband was afraid to disagree with a guy who had him in a hammerlock, but soon they were really going at it.   He would come home from their appointments exhausted, complaining that his back hurt even worse now from the tension.   As the war escalated, Dr. B started in with me, too.   I would lie down on the table, and Dr. B would say something affable, as chiropractors are trained to do, and then before I knew it, he was remarking, "I don't know why the media just shows us the bad stuff.   We're doing a lot of good over there."  

Although I found this annoying, I couldn't blame Dr. B for it entirely, since instead of saying, "And I also have a pain in my shoulder," I would try to offer a cogent analysis of the mainstream media while my face was mashed against a paper towel.  

Dr. B's politics drove my husband crazy, but they didn't really bother me; I just wanted him to tear my head off, in a good way—but then the unthinkable happened: Dr. B stopped taking my insurance.   According to him and his staff, Blue Cross had stopped making payments for Maintenance appointments. As everyone knows, chiropractors study marketing in school, and Maintenance is the way they keep people coming back on a regular basis.  

Note: I have always wondered why although chiropractic really works, chiropractors try to foist it on consumers as if it were snake oil.

"That's okay," I told him.   "I'm not coming in for Maintenance.   I'm coming in because something hurts."

"But you come in once a month," he pointed out.

"That's when things happen to hurt.   I can come in at other intervals if you want," I said, trying to be cooperative, "but it's not Maintenance."

He got a weird look on his face.   Through all our political disputes, he had never lost his air of joviality, but now he looked grim and disapproving, as if I were trying to commit insurance fraud.   "They'll think it's Maintenance," he said.   "No matter what the real story is, that's what they'll think."

Then he tried to tear my head off, for which I was grateful, and I went out to the front desk to settle up.   "This was Maintenance," his receptionist said, handing me a bill.

"No it wasn't," I said.   "My back hurt."

"It's still Maintenance," she said, getting the same weird look on her face he had had.

"Try submitting the claim and see if they pay," I said.

She said she wouldn't do that, and I said that since other chiropractors would no doubt gladly accept my insurance, which cost me a lot every month, I would go see them instead.   She suggested I do that, and added that I would discover that Dr. B was the best chiropractor around.   "You'll be back," she called as I left.

But I haven't.

Was Dr. B right when he said that Blue Cross might cover Maintenance in the short term but that in the long term, they would demand reparations?   Was Dr. B's pre-emptive-strike approach to insurance a correct and principled stance?   Did he assume that because I am not a right-wing zealot, I have some kind of moral defect?

I have no idea.   All I know is that it was a relief to not have to hear anyone's Limbaugh-inspired Talking Points as I was lying helpless on a table.

In fact, at first, I didn't miss chiropractic at all.   I read a book on pain management and developed a positive attitude.   I did yoga.   I stretched, walked, and thought happy thoughts.

But then everything started to hurt again.   At that point, my husband found another chiropractor.   Dr. C didn't take insurance at all but would settle for whatever one's co-pay usually was.   It sounded too good to be true, so I went to check him out.

It was too good to be true.

One practice chiropractors share is the introductory session at which they charge at least twice as much as for a regular appointment, presumably so they can take your history and spend extra time with you.   This means that even if you don't end up liking the chiropractor, you will probably continue to go to him or her because you have made a large financial investment up front.   Like I said, they study marketing in school.

This chiropractor was no exception: Dr. C was a stickler for the introductory session.   Reluctantly, but because my back hurt, I said okay.   I was expecting him to interview me about the history of my injuries, but instead he pulled out a flip chart, sat me down next to an old man who had wandered in at the same time I had, and began a lecture.

He showed us a picture of something that I thought was an orchid but turned out to be an embryo.   "This is how the spine begins to form," he said.   "When life begins—at conception—the spine is already blah blah blah...."   I didn't hear the rest of what he said because I had ascertained that his real purpose was to demonstrate that life begins at conception, and the truth about him immediately dawned on me:

He was a rightwing zealot.

"Sure, he's a rightwing zealot," my husband said when I asked him.   "But we don't talk about politics.   If he starts, I always tell him to stop."

I told him about the lecture I had received, and how the old man next to me had kept interrupting to shout "Amen."

"He's a good chiropractor," my husband said.

But I couldn't bring myself to go back to him, so here I sit, in pain.

It seems to me that before Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court, America was populated by a variety of people: we were a hodgepodge of cultures, ethnicities, beliefs, and practices, but now, we are either Red or Blue.   George Bush and his staff of professional manipulators have polarized America, turning us into warring tribes.

So if you know of a good Blue chiropractor, one that doesn't charge you for a pointless introductory session, one who can get that recalcitrant spot in the neck without your ending up in traction, please let me know.   Meanwhile, I will continue to blame George Bush for my back pain, for the decline of our society, for the weather, and for any other damn thing I can think of.

Bob Woodward, "A Course of 'Confident Action,'" The Washington Post November 19, 2002: A01.

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