Hi again,
A couple of weeks ago a client came in, who I also saw 6 weeks earlier. During the earlier session I did some deep massage on his neck.
When he came in the other week, he told me I must have pinched a nerve in his neck during that previous session: he felt it for half a second during the session and it was briefly uncomfortable, but he didn't think much of it at the time.
However afterwards he experienced tingling and pins & needles down his arm. It was improving when I saw him the other day, 6 weeks on, but it was still there.
Of course this shocked me, I have never had anyone feeding anything like that back to me, and I do quite a bit of deep neck massage with many clients, and have been over the past 2 years and never had any complaints.
This knocked my confidence and of course I was very careful with the client this time. Fortunately he wasn't making a big issue out of it, just asked me to be gentle with his neck. He was redeeming a gift voucher, not sure he would have been back otherwise.
What could have happened? In my initial shock I failed to ask him what exactly I was doing when he felt the pinch, what area exactly I was addressing.
Has any of you experienced this? What area is it likely to have been, which nerve? Was it just unlucky, or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? Could other clients have experienced something similar and have they just not said anything?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Not sure how much use this is - but once when i was having a short Indian Head Massage, the therapist pressed too close to my spine, and i felt a popping and movement - just like when an osteopath replaces something that's out (though I don't know what exactly that is). I was really sore afterwards for days, until a friend rubbed my neck quite strongly and it eventually righted itself. I am very careful around the spine for that reason!
I think I would recommend an osteopath if those sensations don't go away - and perhaps some feedback from an osteo on here would be helpful??
Good luck, it must be extremely unnerving. x x x
Hi PInky, sorry to hear about your problem.
What specifically did you deep massage? Was all of your work posterior?
A few things spring to mind, if all of your work posterior and his scalenes were tight/shortened he could be suffering brachial plexus impingement by the scalenes. Did you do a translation test to rule out stuck/imobile facets and are there any range of movement restrictions and how is this guy's posture in genereal?
I should think it unlikely that you are direrctly responsible for this.
The sensation they felt during the session could have been referred pain. Often when working on a trigger point, it can send refferred pain which is not too disimilar to nerve pain. Can he remember where you were working on when the sensation occured? What parts of the arm were affected? Trigger points in various muscles of the upper back, shoulder, chest and neck can cause referred pain down the arms.
Could be ulnar, radial or median nerve entrapment and these can be trapped at various points along it's path. Knowing what parts of the arm were effected could help to distinguish which nerve is involved.
Were they having problems with their neck before the massages with you? Is that why they came to see you?
If he actually thought you had caused it, I don't think he would have come back to see you to be honest - gift voucher or not. And he would have probably rang you straightaway - not waiting 6 weeks! Have they been to the GP?