An adventrure in medicine

Today i visited Alpharetta Spine and Physical Medicine to visit Dr McMahon to whom I got referred by none other than my friend/AIG compatriot Terry McMahon. I think that they were trying to keep my money in the family. Upon arrival i was sat down to fill out about 7 pages of new patient documentation. Seven pages front and back i might add. After 20 minutes of paperwork i was whisked away, after just getting into an article on March Madness '05, to a new back room where i was asked the exact same questions that i had just filled out. I felt like i was verifying my life to these people without the Batchelor guy prodding me. Next i go to get more x-rays, the same ones that i took last week with a 'real' doctor.

If you don't know the story it is this: Last Wednesday I am sitting in the normal rush hour traffic on GA 400 southbound waiting to get off at the Sydney Marcus Boulevard exit. I am talking to my buddy Natedogg down in Tampa (you know how we roll) planning a little visit which turned into a three night cruise with Grassy, Nate's girl, and her friends. So i am at a dead stop and all of a sudden my world gets rocked. I didn't know what had happened but at the same time i am trying to figure it out i see a 15 passenger van go flying past me go (literally) through two pine trees, lose his front wheels, and nearly flip. I was shaken but still on the phone and decide to tell Nathan that "i need to go i think that i just got in an accident." So now i am one of the assholes on the side of 400 that everyone is gawking at and the people behind are pissed off at because the gawkers are slowing them down from getting home to their exciting life of 6 o'clock news and Hamburger Helper. So i get out and 2 or 3 other cars pull over and i notice that the back right corner of my car is missing. I have had this Stratus since 1999 (looked at the registration) and it is now the beginning of 2005 so i have had it a little over 5 years and put about 110,000 miles on it. I loved that car and it went everywhere with me. Oh yes, Army Stratus i weep for thee. Anyway cops come tow trucks come and everyone leaves. A funny sidestory to a sidestory is that a girl pulls over because she was in front of me and heard a loud noise so thought she got hit too but didn't. She had been in a wreck the previous month and just got her car back. Anyway, there is a hubcap in the road from the van and she wants to get it so it doesn't hit us. A car ends up hitting it and it hits her car and scratches up her new bumper, lousy luck i suppose. I guess that wasn't too funny either.

So, since this accident my neck and back have been stiff and sore and now back to the doctor's office. After some more examination, read: guy pressing really hard on my back where he thinks it might hurt to make it hurt more, i was ready to go get adjusted. After a lengthy kindergarteness explanation of how a spine works we get to it. He contorts me, i feel pops, and this table continues to move in unexpected places. I then experience the water bed where heavenly warm streams of water massage my back for the next 20 minutes. Wow, that was worth it. So, after 2 and a half hours i am out of there and looking forward to next time. I smell Chipotle...

The Thoughts

It seems that for months now I have been thinking about leaving my current employment and heading out on the open road. Not to sound too Kerouac-esque but I think that I need to experience the feeling of having no plans and no physical destination. This trip is both one of mental soundness and solitary reflection. It seems a bold step, even to me, but I feel that if I don't do it now; then when? I will be leaving the job and all that I have ever known being close to my family, my friends, and my life to go out and try to experience something new. Something fascinating that will help me think more clearly on life and what I want and need in the next years. It seems that it would be easy enough to leave but actually buying a ticket to Australia with a one and a half month stop in Fiji was one of the hardest things in my life. Could I really just go? Alone?