This week we saw a self employed printer in his late 30s of age. He was a classic male patient In the sense that he had been living with a niggle for well over 6 months.
He informed us of how his wife had been “nagging” him for months to see someone and get it sorted. It wasn’t until we discussed it that he realised his wife was probably getting fed up of his “nagging”, but genuinely wanted him to get help too. It’s so often the case that men leave things. We are notorious for believing “it will just get better” or “I should just man up and get on with it”. As I sit here writing, I can’t help but feel a sense of guilt, as I too have often been known to leave and winge; even as an osteopath. So it must be something hard wired in our DNA right ? I’m sure of it 🙂
However, isn’t it funny that we tell our nearest and dearest about it ALL the time, yet do nothing about it!
Alas, after a long 6 month wait, said patient eventually consulted us.
He had a niggling pain that would go up and down in intensity dependant on what activities he was doing. He was struggling to sleep on his right side, pick up his children and heavy boxes at work. He also had that classic ache on the indie edge of his shoulder blade and even under the blade when it was at its worst that he just couldn’t get to, when attempting to stretch and “self massage”. He actually called it a bloody annoying “itch pain”. Interesting.
The really interesting bit was that the patient was convinced it was a shoulder issue. After a thorough examination it became clear that the issue was in the right side of the neck ain the middle to lower part at c5 & c6 (insert picture).
This area of the neck will commonly refer pain into the ‘inside border’ of the shoulder blade and when we actually moved the patients neck and touched the muscles around those joints- they could feel the pain in the exact area around the shoulder blade. “That’s it” he said, with a confused look (but that’s my neck he was probably thinking)
So we provided the diagnosis and could proceed with treatment, which involved some gentle soft tissue work, specific stretches to the neck and upper shoulder and finished off with a very gentle neck manipulation to the joints at C5 and C6, and guess what; didn’t even touch the area that was painful most of the time. We also educated the patient on some strengthening exercises and specific contraction based work to help reduce the pain should it return.
The patient was amazed and that night slept on their right side comfortably for the first time in a long time and has since written us a brilliant testimonial and learnt a brilliant lesson…..
LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE. 🙂 LOL
All joking aside we left the patient with a better understanding of their problem and prescribed exercises and strategies to potentially prevent this issue returning. The reason this started was most likely due to the fact that 6months who they’d recently just bought the printing business and had been working very long hours over the desk looking down more than usual and the neck just wasn’t used to that (having previously worked in retail), so a simple change in ‘load’ which the neck didn’t have the capacity to handle hence the symptoms, is more than likely the reason.
1 session. They are better. Pain free. And working with good habits and specific instructions of how to increase the aforementioned capacity, in the know that should the pain arise again; They have a self management strategy to at least try in the first instance.
We love helping people like this in as little time as possible. Empowering our patients to understand that it’s not necessarily all about treatment, but adopting new habits and learning how to self manage – which in most cases people can. They just need a nudge in the right direction.