Oh, By the Way…

I once had a client – whom I’ll call Bob – who for several years had experienced a great deal of pain in the left upper torso. In the two weeks before his first massage, he had awakened during the night to such extreme left chest pain, that his wife took him to the emergency room because he was sure he was having a heart attack. The emergency room doctors found absolutely nothing wrong with his heart and sent him home largely frustrated with some painkillers/muscle relaxers.

When Bob came in to see me, I did an initial intake as per usual, but his paperwork didn’t reveal anything particularly. It was when I got him on the table and started examining the area with my hands that I immediately knew that a big key to his pain seemed to be adhesion and perhaps internal scar tissue in the left lateral abdominal area all the way up into both pec major and pec minor, etc. When I told him this, he told me he’d had a violent injury as a child that had resulted in a broken collarbone, etc., and that additionally, a large part of his colon had been removed on that side. “Forgot to mention it,” he said. “Think that could have something to do with it?” Hmmm. Probably.

Well, after several visits, we had Bob nearly pain-free. But I remember this as one of my favorite “Oh, by the way” moments. It wasn’t the first or last time I had someone on the table when some sort of late revelation provided a key to a issue or perhaps a cause for concern (Oh by the way, I fell directly on my head last month . . . think that could have something to do with my dizziness and neck pain?) And it seems as if I am not alone in this, as I’ve heard fellow therapists share quite a few unusual such moments. I just find myself hoping I never find myself halfway through a session when I client says something like, “Oh by the way, did I tell you I have ringworm?”