A breath of fresh air

Hi

I went for my first McTimoney chiropractic treatment. yesterday.  A friend's been trying to get me to go for ages, but I had bad experiences with physio and remedial massage, so I really  wasn't very keen. I'm very much as the point of 'last resort', now though, so I decided to give it a go.

I have to be honest and say that I can't for the life of me see how the little flicks they do could make the slightest bit of difference, but I'm keeping an open mind.The practitioner, though, was a breath of fresh air!

He  was the only one not to look at me like I'm mad, or making it up, when I listed the many types of pain and neurological disturbance I get every day. It was so nice to have someone tell me it's a good idea to use a walking stick rather than fall down(!), and not sit there and tell me I should use my arm more, swing my arm naturally as I walk, relax my shoulder and all sorts of other things that are, quite frankly, impossible with the pain. Thank God for someone with the common sense to see that I wouldn't be holding my arm this way, doing everything one-handed and walking with a stick if I didn't have to!

He decided against the normal diagnostic testing, because it's too 'antagonistic' and would only make things worse ( I was already having a bad day); and just took a really thorough history. I was speechless - a medical person with the sense to see that pulling my arm around just to see if it hurts is a bad idea? One who actually realises that I know my pain best, and doesn't argue with me about it? Unheard of!

He did a couple of very small things to start the treatment off, and then I have to go back next week. Despite being incredibly gentle, I was still in a lot of pain afterwards and had a pretty miserable evening, but I was expecting that. Unlike the other treatments, though, I will be going back; even if it doesn't make a blind bit of difference, it's worth the money just to find someone who actually listens!

[Sorry if this post is too long, I was just so amazed by yesterday, I wanted to share it!]

Bandit 

Thanks for your responses and words of encouragement.

No, I know it's not likely to take the pain away (though that would obviously be wonderful!), but if poss, I'd just like to get back to where I was four months ago.

The pain's got soo much worse and I think it might be because I'm developing a tolerance for the Tramadol (it definitely isn't working as well as it used to). I know that the only option after this will be to go back on morphine; I was on it last year but became severely depressed (much more than I am now, and it was the first time it had happened) and suicidal. Things got very dodgy for a while there and I decided to come off the morphine because I was convinced it was the cause. I decided that less pain relief, but a better mental state was the right thing for me. But unfortunately, the pain's now so much worse that I have to do something. I decided to try the McTimoney in the hope that it might just get me back to where I was before this recent deterioration, so I could avoid having new/extra meds.

I'm definitely going to give it more time. I can cope with it causing a bit of extra pain/soreness, as long as it doesn't actually make it worse (as those other treatments unfortunately did). Yesterday was a positive start though.

Thanks for your support (and hugs!), and I'll let you know how it goes.

Bandit