big breakthough after six months

[webslave]

If you did hit a triggerpoint, it can be very painful. It will subside in a while.

[johnnyblotter]

Well, I'm now 7 visits into therapy with Stacey Futterman and another of the therapists in her office, and am just stumped and frustrated by my lack of ability to be able to make significant progress.

Her advice to me was a bit different than the Wise Anderson protocol. She advised me to stop using the therawand (which Marilyn Freedman had got me using). Her main problem with Wise Anderson was something along the lines of that no one wants to be listening to endless hours of relaxation CD's. She and Kara, the other therapist, also said it would basically not really be possible to properly reach trigger points in the pubococcygeus, obdurator, and puborectalis, which is where the problem spots have been identified. I thought, ok...I've been using my finger and the therawand as Freedman had suggested for months with no results, and with the Therawand it just felt like I was poking around blindly. Futterman's been doing this for a long time and I thought I'd just try her way.

I feel like they've given me a good idea about where the internal trigger points are and especially Kara really works them out pretty heavily. On one occasion I saw a few days of improvement after a visit with her, only to have my symptoms flare back to their current typical state. I've been advised to use a balancing type of sit cushion wedge thing, and do daily glute exercises (mostly step-ups onto a chair) and some light ab exercises. The approach is more orthopedic certainly than Freedman's was.

However...what I'm just not getting is any significant results. I go for a 45 minute walk every morning, I do my exercises, I take a hot bath for half an hour in the middle of the day and do 15-30 minutes of relaxation or meditation audio as well per day. And still, I'm stuck with tight knot of tension that generally likes to sit in the back right part of the rectum and sometimes sinks down to the perineum. It just feels like a muscle in there is too short to drop, no matter what gets done to it. Stacey understand this and tries to stretch out the levator muscles but at the end of the day they just don't seem to want to fall into place.

Seven visits isn't that many and I'm not ready to give up on them yet, because I think they are doing a thorough job of working the internal trigger points. I'm hoping that with more work and a continued focus on a healthy, relaxed life and positive attitude, eventually the area will settle. But for now, I'm still stuck at about the same level I've been at for months.

[webslave]

Difficult to know what to suggest. I do know that my shoulder trigger points, which flare up when I spend too much time on the computer, will not subside, no matter how much I treat them, if I simply continue to use the computer.

So while you are getting some treatment, the tension in the pelvis is not going away, i.e. the root of the problem. That's why the psychological part of the Wise Anderson protocol cannot be ignored, indeed, it is probably the most important aspect.

[johnnyblotter]

I had another thought today, about the fact when I had all my urinary problems when I was a kid, I would always pull back from peeing because of the pain, when I was dealing with urethral strictures. This went on for years really. So it might be the case that I really need to work more on the paradoxical and moment to moment relaxation to try to get that pelvic muscle drop. It's probably just so programmed in that even though I think it's relatively relaxed, it's not actually relaxed.

I read a section of Headache which I guess I had missed before, about sitting on the toilet and getting acquainted with the feeling of letting the genitals and perineum drop that accompanies urinating. I wasn't thinking about it like this before. I think I have given the psychological part short shrift, partially because I guess I'm used to fighting my way through things.

So I'm going to re-asses that and start taking the relaxation more seriously.

[johnnyblotter]

Well, I discovered something quite amazing a couple of days ago. During a hike I started playing around with my left shoulder, holding my left shoulder down lower as I felt it was sitting up too high. Unbelievably doing this pretty much took me to 95% resolution and has now stuck for a few days. I'm almost hesitant to post this as I don't wanna jinx it. I don't have a good mirror in my apartment but I had been aware for quite some time that my alignment is not that even, which I attribute to holding up the left side of my body as a protective mechanism during the 2.5 years it took me to recover from back surgery. I actually have to pay attention to my shoulder and hold it down and remember to check it as I started noticing that just during normal movements, my shoulder would shoot up really high. The position I need to have it in to make it level with the other shoulder is actually almost painful to achieve, however, it almost completely relieves my symptoms!

For the longest time it has just felt like a muscle on the right side in the back of the rectum was just in the wrong place and too short, but this alignment explanation just makes total sense. As soon as I let my shoulder go back to where it wants to go, I can feel the problem start to creep back.

I've had some strange and amazing but short lived recoveries before so really, who knows what will happen. However, what I like about this alignment deal is that it's completely simple to understand and makes complete sense to me. I can still see in the mirror that I am still not aligned that well even with my shoulder pulled down. However I'm going to start paying a lot more attention to the mirror and dealing with this alignment stuff and see if I can actually resolve the problem that way.

I'm surprised there's not more talk on here of alignment. It just seems like it should at least be considered in assessing this type of problem. I never would have thought my shoulder alignment would have so much effect on this, and I also thought I was walking and moving properly, but after messing around with my shoulder and doing some mirror checks, I realized my left shoulder was obviously so much higher than my right shoulder.

I do think that in my case the internal P.T is a good thing to be doing, but this alignment thing is definitely a component which I'll be really looking into. I'm sure there is still work for me to do, but for now, I'm very very happy to be feeling a whole lot better.

[webslave]

If you are misaligning and pinching nerves as they emerge from the spine, it can cause symptoms

[johnnyblotter]

That's not how I'm thinking about it at all. I'm thinking about it in much more mechanical terms.

For example, if you have a steel wire that's supposed to stand straight up, and you bend it in the middle towards one side, then that middle portion obviously won't be centered between the top and bottom of the wire.

I realize how stupidly simple that is, but as I look at the way my shoulders and neck sit, and what's going on with the pelvis, it just seems apparent. The distance from the left side of my neck to my shoulder is quite a bit shorter than the distance from the right side to the right shoulder. And my left shoulder also will just sit a lot higher.

As I work to pay attention to that shoulder and keep it down and level, it causes tension and tightness in my left upper pectoral muscle. I had a tight feeling in this same place about a year and half ago and thought it was some type of heart problem or something. And I think that exact same type of tightness is what has been happening in the pelvic in the right levator muscles. The wire (spine) and alignment is just ganked over to the left, so the middle part sits too far over to the right.

I don't feel like this alignment thing is necessarily what got me INTO the problem initially, but I think it helped set the stage for me to be prone to a problem like this - just another example of an issue that someone with back surgery could run into. And I think without working to resolve this alignment thing, none of the relaxation or internal P.T has a possibility of working.

Again I'm obviously no authority and am just working off of instinct and awareness. Certainly nerves could come into play, and maybe you're right, maybe that's even the primary reason for a such a long struggle with this...however at this point thinking in mechanical terms seems to make a lot of sense to me.

[webslave]

The alignment of the spine is certainly important. When I was experiencing sciatica pain in 2003, a spinal surgeon (orthopedic surgeon specializing in spine) ran his finger down my spine to assess how straight it was. That's the first thing they check. If your spine is twisted in any way, expect symptoms.