Looking for the Cause In Rapid Recovery Turns Out, It Really Is “All In Your Mind”
(her surgeon’s words) in the speed and ease of her recovery. Kent’s ease and speed of recovery were “off the charts” (his surgeon’s words). Two different people, from quite different backgrounds, of different ages, different genders, from different cities, two different surgical procedures, in different facilities with different doctors.
T HOW? HOW WAS THIS ACCOMPLISHED? One attribute they shared: both were in pain for quite a long
time before choosing surgery. Julie’s was a replacement of the right hip joint. Six years ago, her hip began to hurt. It began with no proximal cause. There is a family history of osteoporosis and, although Julie was taking the appropriate actions to combat it, there was an underlying assumption that such was the cause. She was 52 years old at the time, intensely involved in her work, active in the community, in networking, in reaching out to others. The pain escalated over time. She went to a chiropractor
repeatedly, if not regularly. Each visit brought short-term relief. After three and a half years of increasing pain, the chiropractor suggested an X-ray, to which she readily agreed. That showed deterioration of the joint, so she went on to get an MRI, which confirmed that indeed there was deterioration, indicating the need for joint replacement surgery. Ah, but she waited two and a half more years, to the point
where she limped most of the time and was in pain twenty-four hours a day. Why the delay? Well, some years back, before the current issue became apparent, she’d undergone some minor surgery that was billed as a quick in-and-out procedure — to be completed and her heading home within an hour or so. Instead, she didn’t come out of the anesthesia for many hours. There was a protracted struggle to bring her back. It was frightening — ac- tually terrifying — leaving her with a profound reluctance to undergo any process that required her to lose consciousness. Nonetheless, it became apparent, with pain increasing in
intensity, frequency and duration until it was constant and nearly unbearable, that, if she wanted to go on living her active life, hip replacement was mandatory. She’d long ago given up swimming because swimming ex-
his is the story of recovery from injury of two people — Julie Milunic who publishes this magazine, and Kent McKeithan, the author of this article. Julie “broke records”
acerbated the deterioration and pain. She had been a competitive swimmer in her early years, swimming thousands of laps in many events. Worth noting, in this discovery process, is how that came about.
She was led to the water, to swimming, even though she was
afraid of the water. At age six her mom took her to the pool, requesting the lifeguard there to “get her over her fear of the water, and teach her to swim.” Immediately a powerful mentor/ student relationship sprang into existence, such that Julie trusted the instructor totally. Inside that trust she was able (within five days) to learn all of the basic swimming strokes, nearly giving her mom a heart attack when she arrived at the pool to see Julie proudly waving from the high dive, before diving in and swim- ming smoothly over to her mom. There’s a principle here that we’ll come back to — perhaps the key that so empowered Julie’s recovery process. Kent’s shoulder problem began when he helped his daugh-
ter’s 80 lb. boxer to climb into his lap. No, a boxer’s not a lapdog, but Oscar thought otherwise. The dog was behind and to the right of the chair where Kent was sitting, lifting his paw for help. Kent reached down under the dog’s haunches and boosted Oscar into his lap. In the process, he felt something snap. It was a sharp, painful snap. He nursed it in the short term with ice packs, gentle movement, appropriate extra vitamins, and may have even used Edgar Cayce’s castor oil packs a time or two. It never occurred to him to go to a doctor. He had no insur-
ance, much less sufficient income to fund a surgery. Besides, surgery was so far from anything he’d consider that it wasn’t even visible on the horizon. So he made the best of it, which, for a decade, worked. For years he had practiced daily yoga, beginning with the basic introductory processes of kriya yoga, where he learned to separate, then activate, different muscle groups. This began in his early forties, after a ruptured spinal disk had required surgery, and he’d sworn that nothing would get him back into a hospital for surgery again. Not that the surgery wasn’t successful — it was — but that once around was enough, so he determined to do what was necessary to stay limber. He had moved on to Viniyoga, which he still practices daily
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along with Relaxercise® as he feels he needs it. It was in this context that he treated his own injury. He added several Bowen therapy treatments to his yoga practice. The pain gradually less-
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Natural Triad Magazine
www.TruthAboutMattresses.com SEPTEMBER 2013
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