I often use the concept of an archaeological dig when I’m
treating patients. When a new patient
arrives at clinic for the first time, tells you the story of what happened to
them, what brought them to me and what the problem is the digging begins.
More often than not there are a few things in a patients
past medical history, in some cases there’s a huge list of stuff, all of which
is relevant on some level. One of my jobs as an osteopath is to figure out what
is the new stuff and how to untangle it from the old stuff.
Backed up with clues from what the patient has told me and
what I feel under my fingers I get a sense of which tensions are fairly fresh
and those that have been around a long, long time. I get an idea of which joints
are a bit stiff because of recent strain or injury and which haven’t been
moving for years. Tensions are layered on older tensions and new injuries are
layered on old injuries.
Getting an idea of what came first, how one old injury may
have influenced a newer problem and which problem is freshest is important for
a number of reasons. For a start the
newer stuff should be easier to resolve as it’s not so imbedded into the
structure of the body and we can normally give an indication as to how soon we
would expect to see a change in a condition with treatment.
However, whilst we’re on our archaeological dig through the
tension layers in the body we’ll often uncover stuff that has been sitting
quietly in the background unnoticed. It
may be an old injury that was never fully resolved or part of a postural
pattern that’s been around for a long time.
Whilst this silent problem may have been happily minding it’s own
business for years there’s a chance that osteopathic treatment may disturb it.
If that’s the case, as a patient it’s as well to be warned that this might
happen. It’s all very well going along
to have one problem treated only to find that it seems to trigger another
problem.
Also if the old problem was in some way related to the newer
injury then to avoid a recurrence the older archaeology has to be accessed.
