Life under the Lintel: Check out this cerebellum, baby!

"My doctor looks at me and says, 'Uh, you should probably drop a couple pounds, there, Brian.'

'Thank you!'

Only your doctor has carte blanche on insults. They just insult you for a while and then you pay 'em for the insults on the way out.

'Well, you should lose some weight, and... those moles are looking pretty weird.'

'All right! How much for that, Doc? When can we get together again?'"

- Brian Regan on doctors

With a high five and a "way to go!" I have graduated from my regularly scheduled chiropractor visits. Now I'm in rehab for the next eight weeks with the aim of strengthening my seriously compromised abdominals.

My spine and hips are all ironed out and feeling terrific, and I passed the zombie stomping test, signifying that my cerebellum is fixed. No more cerebellum flab for me.

At my last visit, I performed a series of abdominal assessments where I held certain positions for as long as possible. These times were compared to the national average for women. Out of four tests, one I scored "excellent," the highest rating. Woohoo! The next two I scored significantly below average, but the doctor thinks I can achieve an average rating after rehab.

On the last test, I scored 7; the national average is 149. He conceded that he does not expect me to ever achieve an average rating, but--cheer up!--I can see improvement.

So my doctor is telling me I'm below average and always will be. When I observed that my homework exercises make my arms tired, he told me that's due to "deconditioning." (In other words, you're out of shape.) The best was probably when he told me a couple weeks ago that my left gluteus lacks tone. Awesome! At least that right gluteus is looking good. I'd hate to be flabby all over.

Thanks to my precious bambinos, I have a condition called diastasis recti. My ob/gyn, who also has carte blanche on insults, felt my belly at my last appointment with her and said, "That needs work!"

Diastasis recti is when your abdominal muscles basically tear apart down the front, resulting in a gap where there should be a wall of muscle. Besides resulting in a tummy that will never be flat, despite losing all the baby weight (because your insides literally push out through the hole), it obviously causes serious core weakness.... thus my chronic backaches.

Millions of crunches will never fix this problem, because such movements just force your guts through the gap and push it wider open. Yummy.

Before I started rehab, he sent me out to buy a band I can wrap tight around my belly when I do exercises to avoid further injuring my gap. He tells me he expects me to need to use the band whenever I do abdominal work for the rest of my life.

Maybe this sheds some light on what the chiropractor calls "a flicker of hopelessness" he keeps seeing in my eyes.

I get a comment a lot that goes something like this: "You're so thin for having four kids!"

Now, I appreciate what people are saying here, and I take the compliment, I really do. But the funny thing about this comment is the qualifier "for having four kids." As in, "I expect someone with four kids to be super fat, but you're just a little flabby!"

Now it seems the chiropractor is telling me the same thing: "You'll have a healthy core for someone who's had four kids." Problem is, I want to be healthy--normal--average--compared to a normal person. But, no, I'm running around town searching for a belly band that doesn't exist, because I have this weirdo, gross, lifelong problem and no one sells a help for it, until at last I'm forced into Wal-Mart, that degrader of humanity, to buy a product that's actually supposed to shrink your belly by making it sweat. (???)

Had I made different life choices, I could have had an intact abdominal wall.

And a much emptier life, I suppose.