Cheetah surprise

Me: Hello, I am having problems due to an accident that happened 10 months ago. I still have back pain, nerve pain misfirings, and muscle tension.

G: Ok, come in and we’ll do an interview.

She appears at the door of her office in a small strip mall. The practice is called

Siloe. She is wearing a soft carnation pink medical top with her name embroderied on it stating Licensed Gabriela.

She is in her twenties, brown hair and eyes like all ticas. She is very nice and has Christian music playing in the office.

We walk down a short hallway and into a room with 2 massage beds. After a short interview of my vitals and where and when I hurt and what exaserbates it, she asks for me to stand and then to sit on her massage table.

She exams my back. Checking to see where the main tension of things and deciding where to start.

G: Ok, take off your dress now.

Me:( what, no gown?!?)

Salome: I’m leaving now! No really I’m leaving, I have to go pick up Valeria from school.

Me: (great, I wore my cheetah underwear! Wait, this is Costa Rica, everyone wears wild things) I take off my dress feeling quite bare in my underthings.

G: ok, lay down, with your face down and tell me if you get uncomfortable and I’ll give you a break.

She proceeds to place electrodes and heat on my back, meanwhile singing along with her music. She makes the pulse of the electrode and says-It shouldn’t hurt, tell me if it’s too much. It feels like ant generals are pinching me for the next 15 minutes, sometimes which pinch too hard. She is wearing brown pants and brown shoes with a spring of straps popping out of the front, which I now use to measure where she’s working as I look down towards the floor.

Afterwards, she does ultrasound and massage. Then she takes the electrodes off and after giving me a brief rest to sit up and move my stiff neck around, she says to lay down again.

Hey, I’m in my cheetah undies, not many options but to humbly obey. She then puts cold packs on my back. She is standing off to my left. I feel what feels like squirt guns with cold water shooting me in the side.

I think to myself, it’s a test that she’s checking my reactions to some stimulous. But I just lay there. The squirting continues as she walks across the room and I realize that the bag of cold water is leaking and squirting out on me. I laugh quietly to myself and keep telling myself to relax.

Then she takes the water bags off and mop me up. She then goes to the end of the table, grabs my legs gently pulls and then spreads them. I hear her crawl up on the table and then she kneels, resting her legs on my thighs and she starts doing stabbing spider hands to specific sore spots on my back. She then digs in her elbows, while still balancing on my thighs. I am startled. I’ve had many massages, but have never had the massieus climb on top of me and spider my back.

She gets off, does some more massage and then says ok done.

She asks me how I feel and hands me back my dress. I say, actually, more relaxed and not so tense. She gives me an exercise to do at home and we make an appointment for 2 days from now.

For one hour of work, it’s a mere $20 or Ë10,000 colones.

I feel relaxed but also take some pain meds as I know that after a treatment I usually feel bad. And I have to drink extra water to recoup myself too.