Therapies... - Massage - ''Real Life''

A woman walked into the clinic one day. She had been suffering from pain in her right shoulder. The pain was so intense she could not abduct her arm more than 60° (typically, abduction of the arm measures 180°). She did not recall any sort of trauma to her shoulder, but she reported that it had been this way and getting progressively worse for two months. She was a middle-aged woman that worked at a computer for much of the day. Her job seemed moderately stressful to her. Other than this pain, she was in good health. She had been to two other health professionals that practiced different modalities, but they could not alleviated her discomfort, nor did they pinpoint the cause or source of her problem.

After an initial assessment we determined the treatment plan. I then began to massage the client. When I focussed in on her right shoulder I was able to find a trigger point in her right subscapularis muscle (the muscle between the shoulder blade and the rib cage). As I palpated the trigger point, the client indicated to me that I had recreated the pain that she felt in her shoulder when she attempted to raise her right arm. I released the trigger point as much as possible during the treatment (long-standing trigger points often require more than one treatment to resolve). Once the massage was completed I reassessed the client and found that she was able to raise her arm almost the full 180°. She reported a significant decrease in pain and was very thankful for it. It seemed that the trigger point was the source of pain and poor posture and stress activated it. I demonstrated some stretches that she could perform for her shoulder and suggested some changes she could implement to her workspace to decrease the likely-hood of aggravating the trigger point. We arranged for another appointment the following week.

When the client returned, she reported that her shoulder was feeling much better, and a reassessment indicated that her shoulder was functioning better than when she first had come to the clinic. I treated this client four more times over four weeks until she was able to raise her arm the full range and was pain-free.