"Soft tissue manipulation"

If you EVER hear these words, RUN FOR THE HILLS!

Last night I was at the chiropractor, and we were talking after he had adjusted by neck and back. I was describing to him the gas pains and tightness I feel in my stomach, and he had me get back on the table. He examined my intestines all while going, "Oh my...OH my goodness!" Apparently what he felt was bad.

He told me that there's something called a soft tissue manipulation that kind of "jump starts" or "reboots" the system that is manipulated. He explained that it was like my intestines had short circuited like a computer and that it just needed to be jump started to start working correctly again. He's hoping that this is the thing that finally works.

What he did is push down really, really far into my abdominal area with the fingers of one hand and, with his other hand, he did a like twisting or snapping motion with the other. The pushing down part was incredibly painful...he was going down probably a full 4 inches into my intestines and it not only hurt but also created a lot of upward pressure. Awesome for emetophobes, let me tell ya ;) The snapping motion felt like he had one of my nerves and was blocking the conductance for a second. After the snap, it felt like the shock you get after shuffling your feet and touching something in the winter- just in my intestinal area...

Right after he did it, it felt like the feeling you get when you're incredibly hungry and it feels like your stomach is going to collapse in on itself. When I got home and was showering about 20 minutes later, the feeling turned to more of an abdominal muscle pain that you get after doing 2000 situps or so. After dinner, so about an hour after, and up until now the pain is the weirdest thing I've ever felt down there. It's behind my ab muscles, similar to hunger pains, but also similar to gas pains, but all of that times 100 plus the feeling of having been sucker-punched about 30 times. Also I'd describe it as what I would think someone removing your guts and stuffing them back in haphazardly would feel like.

It hurts mostly when I move, but occasionally hurts when I'm just sitting still. I took the half tablet of Imodium last night like I always do, but I also took a GasX because he said one lady that he did it on had said that the problem she had with it is that it gave her really bad gas pains.

As far as the benefits, I'm having a little trouble seeing past the pain right now. It doesn't rate very high on the pain scale- I'd say like a 6 or a 7- but it's just constant and makes for a very uncomfortable me. As with all muscle pain, I'm sure it'll be gone by tomorrow and I'll hopefully see some benefits. As for now, I've noticed that my gas distribution is a lot better. My gas tends to get caught in one little pocket of my intestines and cause me a ton of pain. It's in a spot that I can't burp or toot it out, but immediately after the manipulation, I noticed that I was able to move my gas through me and get it out finally.

He told me that he'd like to do this soft tissue manipulation at least once more, but I'm not sure I really want that. We'll see if this pain turns out to be worth it enough to suffer through it again.