These presentations are actual clients with identifying information removed.
I invite M into my office. M is in her 60s, she is sprightly and still working. She tells me about her year long fight with almost daily severe headaches and how every 4 to 6 weeks she is struck down with a debilitating migraine. She is on a myriad of medications and reports that it would now be very unusual for her to go more than 4 days without a severe headache.
Like many headache sufferers she spends many hours at her computer, sitting in her car and then collapsing in a heap on her lounge in the evening.
After chatting about her experiences, her failed treatments and re-assuring her that she is in the right place for managing her headaches, she is encouraged to let me have a feel of her neck. We sit on the treatment couch and I prompt her into a corrected neck posture. M is surprised that the headache she had when she walked through the door seemed to ease with this little bit of prompting. We then systematically and gently feel the joints in the top of her neck and as I feel that familiar tightness in her joints M feeds back to me that she feels the pain and stiffness as well. Moving up into the top of her neck I apply pressure to where I think the source of her headache is and low and behold M's familiar headache pain radiates into the back of her skull and temple. We are both excited as we may have found the source.
Our first session is gentle as we work on settling those misbehaving joints with gentle sustained and controlled pressures. When we are done M feels a little more light headed and clearer, but she still has some of the pain she came in with. We talk about what we have found in her neck and how our treatment is going to be directed at those joints. We also talk about how she can help at home and at work by improving her neck and head postures. She is sent off with a headache diary to monitor.
4 days later M returns. She has a skip in her step and smile on her face. Her diary is blank. She has not had any sign of headache since the afternoon of her first session. For two more sessions we continue to gently work on those culprit joints together.
4 weeks on we are still winning. The almost daily headaches have all but gone and M is taking control of her life again with a couple of little exercises and lots of awareness about her head and neck posture. I will see M in a few weeks time and we will see if she has maintained all the good work. We may not be out of the woods yet as we wait and see if that monthly Migraine has also settled, but we still have some more tools in the tool box to help.
M returns a month later and reports that she has been really busy. Despite this she has only had the very occasional headache, she has not had her usual Migraine since starting treatment and feels that she is managing well now that the constant pain has gone. The rare headache that she now reports is much more manageable, so we decide to see how she goes and suggest she seek a follow up only if needed.
M has not returned for physio but we have chatted on the phone. She has been busy travelling and working. She reports that she is still going well. She still gets a headache around the time she used to get her migraine or when stressed, but the severity is so much less and resolves with some simple off the shelf medication. She is continuing to watch her posture and utilise the tips from her sessions. We are both happy to sign off.
Y is a young mum with 3 kids and lots on her plate. She is studying and working and has a few health issues. She has been on a whirl wind of specialist appointments, investigations and treatments. She tells me she can not go a week without experiencing a migraine that can last for several days. Her pain is always on the left side and deep behind her left eye. She has been through a gauntlet of tests to rule out anything sinister. She is seeking my help as she feels that maybe its her neck because it just doesn't feel right.
Y is a slight and fit looking young lady. We talk about her long history and the pattern of her headaches. We can see that there is a link to her pain with the way she sits at the computer and that she is anxious and tense.
When we go through her assessment we find that she is stiff in her upper back and her neck posture is poor. She has a surprisingly high breathing rate and we can see that she is overworking the muscles at the tops of her shoulders and into her neck. When we feel her neck we discover she is incredibly stuck in the left side of one of her upper neck joints and when we systematically work our way through the joints in her neck we can reproduce her eye pain and head pain to perfection.
Initially Y struggled to make consistent appointments due to her family, work load and other health issues, but over a few spaced sessions we are able to work on those stuck joints to loosen them and we had progressed towards working on those familiar headache-producing joints. Although we did not have instant relief of her headaches, Y starts to report that her neck was feeling better and there seemed to be a reduction in frequency and intensity in her head pain.
Y is keen to continue and attends 4 sessions within 2 weeks. We work on those sticky headache producing joints. We work on her breathing pattern and teach her some sneaky on the go relaxation techniques. Over the next few weeks there is a marked improvement. Her migraines are happening far less frequently and the severe eye pain seems to have also settled. Her headaches are milder and short lived.
It has been 2 1/2 years now since we started working with Y. For a short while I would see her every month then it was 3 months then 6 months and now we have gone nearly 9 months. Y returns now only when she feels her migraines returning. It only takes a session to restore the movement in her culprit neck joints and off she goes with some reminders on keeping tabs on her triggers.
Every story is different and not all end in a miraculous cure. But just having someone to listen to all the bits in the Jigsaw puzzle and putting it together in a way that makes sense, then the journey to getting your headaches under control has started. And if that neck is part of that jigsaw, well how exciting is that. I know I get excited.