My Butt Ultrasound

If there’s one thing I have noticed about being a parent, it’s that your children slowly destroy you over time, both mentally and physically.  My latest symptom of parenthood is that I have started to have back pain, so I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for the past couple of weeks.  Their diagnosis?  Carrying around a 40 pound two-year-old all day every day is very bad for you.

One of the services that my chiropractor offers is a 10-minute massage before your adjustment, and it was suggested to me that I ought to take advantage of this, and so on Friday I walked into the place ready for my massage.  Now, I have only had one other professional massage before in my life, and it was a very awkward story that I will tell you about some other time, but let’s begin by saying that I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I was ushered into the room by my masseuse, who told me she would leave the room for a moment so I could change.  She walked out, closed the door, and left me wondering, “Change into what?”  I looked around for some sort of special massage robe or something, but I was in an empty room with just a table that had a small towel on it.  I debated with myself; what should I do?  I sat there with my hand on the door for a minute or two, going back and forth as to whether or not I was going to leave the room, hunt down the masseuse, embarrass myself, and ask what the heck I was supposed to change into, or just sit there and look like an idiot when she came back and I had not “changed.”

I eventually decided to be proactive, so I left my assigned room and roamed the hallway looking for the young woman who was going to be doing my massage.  I eventually found her at the sink, washing her hands.  I asked what I was supposed to change into, and she smiled and told me to just take my shirt off and make sure my pants were loose enough for her to get into.  Or something like that.  So I went back into my room, took off my shirt and belt, undid my shorts button, and got myself lying face down on the table.

My main problem was my tendency to hold Edward on the same side all the time, so my pelvis was crooked, and the pain had spread down to my glutes (that is doctor talk for “butt”).  The massage went fine, with not too much glute action, and after she was finished she told me to just stay on the table until the chiropractor came in.  This was weird, because I generally did not have my adjustments done with my clothes off, but I did what I was told and just lay there for five minutes or so, being nervous.  Side note: when you are laying on a table half dressed and worrying, five minutes seems much longer.

When the chiropractor did enter the room, she seemed surprised and asked me to put my clothes back on.  I jumped up quickly and scrambled to get re-dressed, and after a short awkward moment we proceeded as usual.  She asked how I had been doing, and I told her that I had continued to have pain in my butt glutes.  She commented that my muscles seemed very tense, even after my massage, so she recommended that I have an ultrasound.  This was confusing to me, as I was not pregnant, but since all of my troubles did originate with my wife’s having a giant baby that I was required to carry around all the time, I decided to go with it.

I was led into a different room, where I was met by my masseuse again, and this time I got to leave my clothes mostly on, although I had to lift my shirt up and hike my shorts down, plumber/skater style.  Once I was lying face down again, I felt a freezing cold goo being squirted all over my hindquarters, which was actually quite refreshing last Friday, as we were in the middle of a heat wave.  Once I was properly gooed, I felt some sort of wand rubbing around my butt, producing the strangest sensation.  It was heating up my deep muscle tissue, and yet the gel on my skin was still ice cold.  It was like being in a microwave.  I was hot and cold at the same time, Katy Perry style.

Once it was all over, she wiped the goo off of my butt and I was on my way.  It was an odd experience, but I have to say, my pain has mostly disappeared.  Now I just have the normal back pain, which hopefully will go away soon too.  If Edward would just stop wanting me to pick him up all the time, I would be doing a lot better.  I will try to talk to him about this, because as much fun as it was the first time, I don’t know that I want another butt ultrasound any time in the near future.