Head! Move!

I got into the massage and body work business to help people out of their aches and pains etc. Not too long into my career I started to use a lot of cranial therapy (moving the bones and structures of the head for health benefits). My mother has done Cranial for years so gave me pointers/advice/motivation etc. which has been quite...er...handy. (Get it, I use my hands a lot).

I only bring up this rather boring subject on my blog because recently I got a phone call that made me happier than anything else in this business ever has, but first; the back story.

When I was living in Missouri I would drive to 4 or 5 Amish communities and work primarily on children, though there were a few adults that I treated as well. One of these children was a little girl named Kristina. She was 4 months old when I started treating her and had such extreme deformities in her head that doctors told her parents she would have to have surgery by the time she was 8 months old or suffer brain damage and growth stuntage.

I wish I could have taken pictures, but the Amish don't allow that through their faith. Anywho, it looked as if someone had taken the top of her head and rotated it to the left by twenty-five degrees and then for good measure pushed it down over her left ear. Her right eye socket was the size of a golf-ball while her left the size of an almond. the center of her forehead was over the outside portion of her left eye-socket and her occiput was sunken and tilted left over her atlas.

Her parents, not having the money or desire to put their daughter through a traumatic surgery, asked if I could help. I told them I believed that I could, but I couldn't guarantee anything. Over the next three months I saw their baby every week to two weeks. The third time they brought her to me I couldn't recognize her so drastic were the changes.

I refer to her as my Rubiks-Cube baby... rude of me, but oh well. After a while of not taking her to the doctors they got quite insistent that she be brought in and seen. The parents asked if they could do a reevaluation first before resorting to a surgery. Sadly I moved out to Utah before they brought her in but referred them to another cranial therapist to finish what I started. When I left she looked really good. Her eyes were even and almost the same size, the top of her head was rotated to it's proper alignment, and her occiput was nearly normal.

The phone call. About a week ago I got a call from her father Thaniel who told me that they took her in for her evaluation and the doctors were astounded that she was the same baby. They told him that she no longer needs the surgery and appears to be looking forward to a life of healthy normalcy. I was so happy I cried. It showed me that no matter how difficult it is to find gainful employment in my field, and how much of a struggle it can be to support myself doing solely this, it can be totally worth it in the lives of the people I see.