Physiotherapy in general and manual neurotherapy in particular is not always easy. Let me tell you the story of a young fellow of 21 years with strange forms of pain.We met this young man in one of our courses as a case study. On his hollidays he was crossing the desert in a off road with a SUV. His car slipped in a deep ravine and rolled over several times. He immediately felt that he was badly hurt but he succeeded to get back on the top of the ravine and to call for help with his mobile. In the hospital the medical team detected a massive bleeding in the stomach area. He needed immenent chirurgy and as the doctors could not know which organ was bleeding they cut in the whole midline of the stomach. It was the spleen that was responsible for the bleeding and this organ was removed and the bleeding arteries were repaired. Shortly after the operation the patient started to have pain in the whole stomach area, climbing up to both shoulders and arms and climbing down in the legs. He had difficulties in studying and in concentrating and focusing. We started to test his nervous sytem by pricking and brushing the skin over different areas and we soon find out that the whole central nervous system was sensitised, starting from the spinal cord to the brain. It was impossible to do any massage or mobilisation on the spine so the only thing we could do was to work with nerve reflex points and/or with zonetherapy on the foot. But, surprise, also the skin of the feet were to sensitive to work on. My assistant teacher, Griet, tried all the skills she could but there was no response a she could not go deep enough on the soft tissue on the feet. There was another strange thing in the patient symptoms. There was a clear difference in temperature and skin behaviour on both sides of the operation scarf on the stomach. Clearly, the energy flow from left to right was interupted. As the exams were approaching and the young man could'nt take to strong pain killers, he asked us to give advice about other possibilities to treat the pain. We had to recognise that the results of our tests were pointing at "hands off!" regarding manual neurotherapy or other kinds of physiotherapy. Anyway we had to suggest a way to first treat the scarf and then to desensitise the central nervous system. For the scarf we advised infiltrations of lidocaine (neural therapy) and for the central nervous sytem special acupuncture for stimulating the descending endogenous pain system. We will see the boy back in a couple of weeks after having four sessions of acupuncture and infiltrations. I keep you informed. Maybe this case seems not spectacular but for all the therapists in the course it was a good lesson. Sometimes you have to admit that hands off are better than hands on.
