The Healing of Therapeutic Massage

 

I’m delighted that my short essay “After Cancer Treatment, a Restorative Touch,” on the healing power of therapeutic massage for cancer patients, is published in the July issue of American Journal of Nursing. Because it’s available only to subscribers, I’m unable to include a link so that you can read it. This kind of therapy was invaluable for me because it gave me my body back.

This is the story of how the essay came to be written. 

I had never had any kind of massage before, not even a Swedish massage that just feels good. Therapeutic massage was much more. I wrote most of the essay after my first session. Trained in oncological massage for cancer patients, the therapist asked me specific questions as to what therapies had been done, did I have surgery to removed my prostate, did they remove any lymph nodes, and were there any tender areas she should avoid? 

Although my body has been exposed to dozens of people through the course of my treatments, here I was covered by a sheet, and the therapist uncovered one part of my body at a time to work on it. Besides tightness in my legs, I held a surprising amount of tension in my shoulders, neck, and even my face. 

The months of probings, blood tests, biopsies, radioactive wires, photon radiation, and the hormonal and systemic disruptions caused by eighteen months on the leuprolide drug, whose aftereffects were still affecting me, had left my body in sad shape. Her work enabled me to continue with the yoga classes I recently began to get my strength back.

When you have cancer, your doctors work to combine and coordinate therapies to kill the cancer. How your body feels while they are doing this is not their primary focus. What your emotions are doing is also not their focus. They do care about both of these, of course, and if you mention that you are struggling with one of them, they will find a way to make you more comfortable. 

One of the positive shifts I see happening, and I may be wrong because it seems to be a new thing in two of the three cancer facilities I’m familiar with (the third doesn’t offer it), is that more cancer places are providing massage therapy. As a patient, you lose much of your strength, coordination, and flexibility because of the disruptions and dislocations of cancer treatments, and your muscles cramp and become tight from simple exertions. Therapeutic massage enables you to move through the day feeling good.

I hope that therapeutic massages become standard offerings in all cancer centers.

 After Cancer Treatment, a Restorative Touch