Shoulder Pain and Lung Cancer
For the last 10 years this date has stuck out in my head. Today, I didn’t realize it until a Facebook memory reminded me.
10yrs ago life as I knew it changed forever when my Mom was diagnosed with stage 3C lung cancer.
It was devastating. I remember all the details of where I was standing and what I did next, and remember being so grateful that I was at a job where my co-workers felt like family, because getting engulfed by their hugs was everything I needed. The rest was a blur of try to operate like normal vs walking through life like a zombie.
Grief of loss began in that moment, two years before she would pass away.
It would be many days of reading all the details about lung cancer, the symptoms, diagnosis, the treatments, the prognosis. And as more and more information flooded my mind, all I could think was how did all the health care provers miss it. How is this missed on SO MANY PEOPLE, not just my mom.
Learning this was the beginning of me shifting my traditional al sports healthcare practice to a truly more holistic approach.
Complaints she had for 5-10yrs earlier that the doctors chalked up to bad posture and muscle strains and joint sprains and arthritis, we the LOUD but silent symptoms of her 🫁.
Shoulder and neck pain, limited ROM, weakness, finger numbness. It would be 2+ more years until I took my first visceral manipulation class but I knew that all the doctors and physical therapists could see past a musculoskeletal symptom that was actually drive by visceral pain and dysfunction.
I knew that if I didn’t appreciate what was happening inside of my athletes I was missing a big piece of the picture of what was effecting their pain and movement. And could truly cost them precious time in diagnosis of something bigger.
So here I am 10yrs later, still missing my Mom but grateful for all that I have learned on this journey and how many people I have helped better and truly more holistically since that August day in 2011.
If you are not considering the visceral connections and neural influences on the body you are missing a big part of the picture of movement and pain.
