Raison d’etre

Posted: September 25th, 2007 | Author: Debbie Hellmann | Filed under: Massage Therapy, Technique | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

raison d’être /rayzon detr / ORIGIN French, ‘reason for being’
• noun – the most important reason or purpose for someone or something’s existence.

My grandmother used to tell me that we are all given different gifts, and I believe without a doubt that massage is mine – my raison d’être. I believe this because I have had the great fortune of having seen first hand (no pun intended!) the positive effects resulting from us placing on our hands on someone.

From the soothing touch of a mother’s hand to the therapeutic effects of applied, informed touch, there is no question of the power that literally lies within our hands – whether it is to comfort, or in our case as practicing massage therapists, to assist in providing optimal healing to the body.

One client specifically comes to mind, a former college football player who has been diagnosed and has been living with, Avascular Necrosis for the past four years. He has been told that he will be a candidate to total hip replacement in roughly four years.

To come full circle for a moment from my last blog on technology, when I first found out what my client had, I searched the internet like crazy for any kind of article regarding massage and this condition. Because of the word “necrosis”, I knew something was dying.

Avascular Necrosis also known as Osteonecrosis is a disease resulting from the temporary or permanent loss of the blood supply to the bones. Without blood, the bone tissue dies, causing the bone to collapse, which then leads to joint dysfunction. Although it can affect any bone in the body, the most commonly affected sites are the epiphysis (ends) of the long bones, particularly the femur. Check out the cool diagram below, which I found under Patient Education on orthogate.org.

At any rate, my client has lost a significant amount of flexibility in the affected leg. In addition, the affected leg has atrophied considerably, so much so that it is noticeable both visually and physically. The affected leg is not just visibly smaller, but lacks muscle density.

He walks with a pronounced limp, with a gait that seems like he’s swinging his leg forward from the hip. He often complains about a “bone-on-bone” feeling which gives him a lot of pain – not just sometimes pain, but constant pain. When I asked him what his doctors said, he indicated that he was told there’s not much they can do but wait. If they do hip replacement surgery too soon, he may have to get another one in his lifetime.

Seems like a terrible prognosis, no? Wait until what? The hip fractures? Gives me the heebie-jeebies, I tell you.

It took me several months to convince this particular client to come in for some work, especially since by his reasoning, there was nothing that his doctors had been able to do for him so far except prescribe him pain medication. I managed to wear him down finally, and he came in for his first appointment.

I knew at the point he came in that there was nothing I could do as a massage therapist to “fix” him, and that all I can do is help him manage his pain. I spent an hour and a half working on him. I incorporate a lot of stretching in my sessions, but I was very careful not to stretch his affected leg, which had an atrocious range of motion – or is it a lack of? Flexion at the hip of the affected leg was roughly 35 degrees, with his leg medially rotated. From the feel of it, it seemed as though the bone was “fused”. I didn’t dare apply any kind of pressure whatsoever.

While it took me a several months to convince this very skeptical client to come in for a massage, the payoff was completely worth it. I always send a customary follow-up email the day after I work on a client, and when I sent him my customary email, he replied that he had not felt that loose or pain free in two years and he wanted to book his next appointment.

That was all the validation I needed – I had found my “raison d’etre”.

Melinda Eubank

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