My Story

Part 1

Allow me to tell you the story of Lonnie, a young woman I treated while working in Boston in the late 1980’s. A woman that typifies the story of many who undergo a concussion from a mid-air collision in sports, a car accident, or any trauma and remain incapacitated, because nobody really understands or knows how to deal with it. People who fall through the cracks, because the symptoms don’t show up in an obvious way on an x-ray or MRI or standard diagnostic testing. Because the insult is deep in the Cranium, at the core of the Central Nervous System, which isn’t visible or the mechanisms of it’s functioning, entirely understood. (Note-newer, more sophisticated brain imaging today will reveal an abnormality in the brain). Though treatment options remain limited.

Part 2

Lonnie was a beautiful vivacious 26 year old, working 2 jobs as a designer and interior decorator. She was full of life and radiated wholesomeness and vitality. That is, until a machine fell off a shelf and dimmed her "light", literally and figuratively. She went from being bright eyed and extroverted and full of energy to "being a shell of herself." She told me, she would go home to her apartment and count to 10, over and over to keep her from losing her mind. She had lost her cognitive abilities, the ability to think and reason and be analytical. She couldn't work, she suffered from headaches and neck pain and back pain. But most of all "she didn't feel like herself." She had lost her capacity to enjoy and live life fully.

Lonnie was referred to me from a chiropractic classmate who had worked with her for about a year with little results. Prior to that, she had had extensive neurological testing at Massachusetts General Hospital, that revealed a small blip, an anomaly in her EEG. But because it was insignificant and couldn't be explained medically, she was told there was nothing wrong and to go on with her life.

When I first saw her, I was struck by the fact that she was so vulnerable and so eager to try anything that would restore her back to the life she once knew. I explained to her that the force of the machine falling on her head, had severely compressed the delicate membranes that cover the spinal cord and line the inside of the cranial vault. That removing or unburdening the Nervous System of these concussive forces would restore the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid and help her Central Nervous System reorganize itself and return to its prior state of functioning. It was my belief that the trauma she sustained, was a direct cause for her inability to think well, to concentrate, to have headaches and be able to live a normal life. That the concussive force she sustained was hampering her brain and nervous system's ability to function and re-orient to its original blueprint.

A series of CranioSacral treatments ensued over a 6-month period. For the first three months, I saw her 3x a week, then twice a week until it gradually tapered off to once a week and every other week. She eagerly looked forward to our sessions. By the end of 6 months, she was 95% her old self. All symptoms had vanished. She felt streaming in her trunk and pelvis and legs, as sensation returned to her body. She no longer felt "numb" and felt "alive" again. Her affect changed. Her face changed from a flat, emotionless, zombie like stare to an expressive young woman. She could laugh again and had the animated expression of someone in control of her faculties once again. She returned to work, and had the intellect and energy, that existed prior to the accident. She felt like she had returned to the world of the living.