Hand back in
I offered to massage a person who I saw was in obvious pain. She came yesterday and I worked on her nervous body, and yes, it did offer her relief.
So many times in life, we accept constant pain as our lot, thinking that this is something we have to live with. The physio hasn’t helped, neither have the pain killers or other methods of treatment we have tried. Time and again, I had people coming to my clinic, trying massage for the first time, and realising that hey, that pain has gone. There is a common route that doctor’s take and that is to send their clients to physio, accompanied by an x-ray, and pain killers and if none of that works, they’ll be sent to a specialist for an assessment and probably, operation. I might be being a bit hard on doctors but that seems to be the pattern I have observed many times. There is nothing wrong in this but there are two things I would do differently. The first is that I would suggest a person also tries massage if the physio has been unsuccessful. That was another thing I saw constantly in my clinic, of people finding they gained no relief from physiotherapy, yet benefited immensely from massage. There could be two reasons for this, one that a massage appointment generally lasts an hour as opposed to a 15-or-30 minute physio treatment and the second is that physios tend to target one spot, whereas a massage therapist will work further afield from the place of discomfort. When I did my massage training, the current training of physios did not include massage but was brought back into the curriculum shortly after, when it was noticed the methods being taught weren’t as effective as previously. I think doctors regard massage therapists as the poor cousin, some of this thinking stemming from the lesser training involved for massage but in many cases the massage therapists have had way more training in actual massage than what physios have had.
The second thing I would do differently is to send the patients for a scan. So many injuries cannot be seen on an xray; this particularly includes soft-tissue injuries such as torn muscles.
By the time a person reaches a surgeon, he/she makes the assumption that all other alternatives have failed. He learns that the patient has seen a physio, had the necessary tests and surgery is all that is left. Has this person also tried massage? Of course, there are some things that do require surgery and that is all that will fix them, but there are others that might just subside with the right kind of body-work.
Yesterday’s massage was just a one or two off. I was pleased that I didn’t experience that tiredness that I have carried for the last four years. I really am feeling like I was before I got sick. Yay.
We now have two other therapists on the Peninsula. I don’t want to take their work from them, plus I am enjoying my retirement too much. I am not going back to massage, but I just couldn’t let this person continue on, believing pain was her lot, without at least trying massage and seeing if it helped.