I’m going to try my hardest to keep updating regularly.  I’ve been very bad about it I know. 

For the past three weeks my neck and upper back have been hurting me.  Then two nights ago it REALLY started hurting…shooting, stabbing pains…a 10 on the pain scale.  I couldn’t sleep at all and so the next day I called my supervisor and asked him to make an appointment for me with a chiropractor and to accompany me so he could help with translation.

He called me back and told me that I had an appointment that afternoon but he had to go out of town so someone else from the office would take me…

Well, that afternoon I went to the office to find that the person taking me didn’t speak English.  I guess that didn’t really matter since all he did was drop me off!  Neither the doctors nor the nurses spoke English either so there was a lot of pantomiming going on.

To top off the confusion, this chiropractor’s office was like none I’ve ever seen.  It was just one big room (encompassing the reception area at one end) with massage tables lined up next to each other with old women and men getting massages from the “doctors(?)”.   I lay down on a table at the end of the line of grandmas and grandpas and waited.

Finally, a doctor walked over to me and I pointed and gestured about where on my neck and back I was hurting.  To which he responded by pressing my right knee (rather hard) and saying “itai?” (does this hurt?)  I shook my head and pointed again to my back and neck whereupon he pressed really hard on my (full) bladder and said “itai?”  At this point I was still confused but starting to get a little annoyed.  So again, I pointed to my neck and shoulders and said “koko itai!” (it hurts here!)

Finally, he started poking around my neck and back asking “itai? itai?” at the various places.  It was all “itai” of course, if for no other reason than that he was pushing with all his strength.  Then he worked his way to the front of my neck where he pressed his fingers really hard against my esophagus.  “Itai?” he asked again and I just nodded (since I couldn’t actually breathe).  I thought “when does it NOT hurt when you’re getting strangled?!?”  But by this time I was beyond annoyance and just trying not to laugh.

Funnily enough though, my neck did feel a little better after he was finished.  But I still have the initial pain that I started with (before the excruciating pain that made me lose sleep) so I’m going to go to an English speaking general physician on Monday to have x-rays done and hopefully get to the bottom of this “itai.”