A 15 point checklist that will help in the treatment of your pain
Clients come to me with an “issue”. Where is it? What is it? What can I do for them?
My massage college gave me a rather extraordinarily good set of questions to ask that I’ve found very useful in getting answers to these questions.
When you go to your therapist for your therapeutic massage, you can enhance your session by having answers ready to some or all of these questions.
Can you point to the spot or region where it hurts?
How long ago did it happen and what else is associated with it?
Does the pain radiate to other parts of your body?
How long does the pain last? Minutes, Hours, Continuously?
What happened? A sudden accident? Did it creep up over time?
On a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is the worst you can imagine), put a number on your pain.
The pain is: dull aching; sharp, shooting, burn; deep and nagging dull; sharp; throbbing and diffuse.
Is it constant/constant+fluctuating, periodic, crops up from time to time.
What aggravates the pain?
What have you found brings relief?
Who has treated this pain? A doctor, chiropractor, physiotherapist, someone else? And what sort of treatment did they offer?
Any surgeries, medical conditions, accidents, whiplash in your past?
Anything else that might be related to the symptoms you have?
What do you want to get out of this massage session?
What medications are you currently using? This doesn’t just mean what are you taking for the pain. This includes any/all prescriptions, over the counter drugs, and herbal medications.
The answers to these questions help you and the therapist narrow down the options available to treat your pain. Try to answer as many as possible.
This post originally appeared in my Google Blogger account at: https://robhodgins.blogspot.com/2016/06/self-care-in-world-that-does-not_28.html
I have moved the post here after learning about Google’s plan to stop one of its services (Google +) because I had concerns about Google’s plans with Blogger.