Sadistic Massage for Everyone!

Thank you all so much for loving my mommy. She came through the hip replacement surgery very well and I even got to talk to her for a few minutes yesterday. (And may I just say if the South Beach Diet came with the kind of drugs my mom is on, the whole experience would be a LOT more pleasant. Or maybe it wouldn't but who would care?)

Today I went to a 2.5 hours of neuromuscular therapy, which is basically, a really sadistic form of massage apparently combining a tiny bit of Swedish massage and a fist-fight plus a few sharp implements.

It's unbelievable. Because it hurt-- oh my gosh, it really did -- but she got movement out of my foot that I haven't seen since before my surgery in March of 2007. Y'all, I can do FOOT CIRCLES. I didn't know that was even possible, given the three screws in my foot. She used this wooden implement thing that I told her I was going to kidnap and take home and set on fire but that thing has some sort of MAGIC in it. And then she pointed out all these other areas of my body that have been affected by the rigidity of my foot and that was quite the eye-opener. (And more pummeling.)

Naturally, I now think that EVERYONE should go for neuromuscular therapy. I felt TALLER walking out of there. The therapist said she could tell from my posture and alignment that I get migraines. "I can help you with that," she said and she was dead confident.

I'm going to be going to her weekly until we get some of the kinks out of this old body and I retrain my muscles to walk like a normal person. I think it's the missing piece to my treatment. Like now we've found the structural cause of my pain and we have one piece in place for treating the bones and now we have to build up the soft tissue that supports the bones and correct all the funky alignment I've developed while trying to compensate for the pain I had just walking.

Of course, it's not covered by insurance, so that might cut into the idea I have that we should all have someone take a look at our alignment. But yowsa, it was truly amazing. If I can figure out a better way to describe it, I'll let you know.

So, the thing about my massage therapist is that she lives with chronic pain. She has Fibromyalgia AND MS, and while she has bad days, she is actively continuing her search to find ways to live BETTER and with less pain. Just like my friend Laurie. Just like the Pasta Queen. What continues to surprise me is how many people live in chronic pain and are managing it because there just aren't any answers for them. I feel like I should do something on their behalf, having now had a pretty good schooling in the shades of chronic pain.

Because what this experience has taught me more than anything else is that suffering in silence is not the answer, and there are a lot of people out there doing just that.