At last! I find a decent medical practitioner

Hello, and welcome to my third post. The story so far: I've been incapacitated by a long-term mystery condition which seems to have baffled the medical profession, and which has left me in so much relentless pain and in such a state of chronic fatigue that I've been unable to work, or do anything much really.

Last time, I wrote about my discovery of the Sternoclydomastoid ("SCM") muscle in the neck, and some of the problems that this pesky muscle can cause.

The way it happened was this. I'd been getting absolutely nowhere with getting any sort of diagnosis of my condition, despite seeing a number of specialists in various fields, and having loads of physio treatment on my neck, from a number of different physios.

I'd get some temporary relief from some of the physio treatment, but my symptoms would always return in a day or two.

One day, I was searching on the internet for any condition which looked vaguely similar to mine, and on one of the sites (can't remember which) there was a reference to a book called "Office Hours: Day and Night", by someone called Janet Travell. The name didn't mean anything to me at the time, but it  does now.

The reference said that in Janet Travell's book, she describes the SCM muscle, and some of the symptoms that can be associated with trigger points in it (I was aware of trigger points by this time, following all the physio treatment I'd had).

There was a specific mention of disorientation experienced when driving, along with the headaches and dizziness.

I ordered a second-had copy of the book that day, along with a book called "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" by Clair Davies.

The section in the autobiography which caught my eye goes like this:

"To my mind the sternoclydomastoid is the most intriguing muscle in the body. I discovered that in addition to setting off referred pain in the head and face, it apparently transmits proprioceptive nerve impulses that inform the brain of the position of the head and body in surrounding space. When trigger areas and abnormal tension develop in a particular part of the muscle - its clavicular division - the deranged sensory input conflicts with information from the eyes relayed to the balancing centers of the brain. Then, whenever head movement changes the antigravity load on the sternomastoids...the person experiences a lightheaded form of dizziness..."

It goes on:

"During an acute attack of sternomastoid postural dizziness, a person suddenly cannot drive his car. It veers, too. The operator's brain misjudges the amount of force that he applies to the steering wheel, and, try as he may, he cannot keep the automobile moving in a straight line".

This all seemed to exactly match my symptoms, and I was convinced that I'd finally managed to diagnose my condition - namely that I had something called "SCM Syndrome".

Co-incidentally, I found out from the other book that I'd ordered at the same time - "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" - that Janet Travell was actually the co-author of the definitive book on trigger points and their treatment - "Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual".

Fantastic. I now had a diagnosis, and in "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook", I had a guide on how to self-treat the trigger points.

Before I attempted this, I saw the musculo-skeletal physio who had been treating me, and asked him to check for trigger points in my SCM muscles. Sure enough, they were there.

That was the good news, and this discovery happened in April - co-incidentally one year after I'd had to stop working due to my condition.

The bad news was that over the next few months, and despite trying all sorts of different treatments on my SCM muscles, my symptoms, although sometimes improved for a while, remained stubbornly persistent. In fact, some of the treatment actually made me much worse.

Anyone who hasn't experienced the full force of these "cervicogenic" headaches and dizziness can have absolutely no idea how debilitating they are, how they sap all your energy, and how low you sink while you're having them.

The worst thing was to try a new treatment for these trigger points, and then end up feeling ten times worse afterwards.

In "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook", Clair Davies describes how you can self-treat SCM trigger points by massaging them between your fingers and thumb.

I'd advise extreme caution to anyone suffering from SCM trigger points, and attempting this. In my case, this caused acute headaches and dizziness.

Another of the treatments a number of physios had tried was dry-needling these trigger points. Again, these caused serious short-term problems (especially dizziness), and seemed to have no long-term benefit at all. The same thing with SCM stretches - occasionally some short-term relief, but nothing that "stuck".

I stopped seeing the physios as I wasn't getting anywhere, and instead found an excellent local chiropractor. I'd been a bit dubious about being treated by a chiropractor; I'd had one previous session from a different one, and didn't really like that "bone clicking" thing they do.

However, this local chiropractor has turned out to be really excellent, and I'm so glad I stumbled across her internet site. It turned out that she practices from her home, which is about 5 minutes away from me.

This is key advice for anyone with a condition similar to mine; you really need to find a practitioner who you trust, who you feel is really acting on your behalf, and who you feel really has an interest in getting to the bottom of what's going on, and can look at the problem in a holistic, open-minded way.

Easier said than done, finding someone like this, I know.

Well, that's enough for now. Next time, I'll describe her treatment, and whether it was successful or not.