A childhood accident can affect a patient for a lifetime.
A twenty-year-old man presented with headaches, neck pain, and lower-back pain. His major issue was ulcerative colitis, starting at age sixteen.
Fortunately, one of my students worked on him as an infant, but he had a bad accident as a four-year-old child. His dad leaned a large tractor wheel against the barn. While he was jumping off of it, the wheel fell on his chest.
He suffered a slight concussion, and hospital testing showed that the force of the wheel had cut his liver, resulting in internal bleeding. He remained in the hospital for four days for observation.
He had seen many professionals about his ulcerative colitis without resolution. I offered the following hypothesis:
He presented with a 60-second brain cycle and exceptional tightness around his liver. Anatomically, the large intestine ascends from the ileocecal sphincter and takes a right angle at the hepatic (liver) flexure to become the transverse colon.
Using the analogy of a garden hose, if the opening allows for normal passage of waste, the colon can function well. I theorize that the blow to that flexure area restricted the passage of contents similar to a kink in a garden hose.
I spent the entire visit working that area locally and also feeling for full-body strains passing through it. The tissue started to release well, and I am hopeful that, as the area normalizes with more therapy, his colon function can significantly improve.
For therapists, it is important to take a full history and have a good working knowledge of anatomy. It would have been great if he had had therapy right after the accident.
Gillespie Approach Training is a great tool to have in your toolbox.
