A patient of mine–let’s call him “Doug”–was walking his dog a while ago when an appetizing squirrel suddenly ran in front of them and his dog decided it was dinner time. The dog pulled hard on the leash, causing Doug to lose balance on a patch of ice and fall quite harshly on his bum.
He was very sore and couldn’t sit easily for a while, but Doug didn’t think much of it. One morning weeks after the fall though, he woke up and couldn’t move is neck. This brought him to the clinic.
Now for a moment, let’s think of Doug as a play-dough man: if he hit the ground, yes: the point of impact would be flattened, but the WHOLE, entire rest of the dough body would also be affected and completely change shape. The shock wave would create a change in the structure, even in parts far from the point of impact, along a force vector.
This is similar to how impacts work in the human body. The only difference is that the vector doesn’t follow the anatomy and can create what seems to be a random series of restrictions of mobility all through the body that only the expert hands of an Osteopathic Manual Therapist can look for.
The other difference with our play-dough man is that as we live, as we fall when we go skiing, as we slip on the ice, we accumulate these injuries all over our body that change the way traumas affect us in little ways.
One other interesting element is that after a trauma, symptoms can occur immediately or later in time, and even in body parts other than the originally painful ones. In the case of Doug, his neck “decompensated” long after his bum, but falling on your bum will create a little bit of an ascending whiplash phenomenon.
We pursued the treatment working on all the bones, muscles, ligaments, connective tissues, viscera, and nerves affected by the shockwave that made it all the way to Doug’s skull. The treatment helped him to be pain-free again, though he maintains that his dog is still a pain in the neck!
If you fall or suffer a trauma of some kind, it’s a good idea to see your Osteopathic Manual Therapist soon afterward. We even keep emergency appointment slots available for our patients, for when you would really benefit from being treated ASAP after something like this! You can click here to book an appointment with us.