It’s become sort of a running gag at the physio place with the rest of the staff that Magic Physio Man and myself are in a platonic S&M relationship. My pain tolerance is renowned with everybody in there, as is his ability to reduce full grown men about three times my size to a sobbing heap at his feet with a few well aimed pressure point taps. He’s got a well earned reputation for being a hard task master, and the staff and even the owner are endlessly entertained by the fact that when I get up off the table, he’s the one that has to go put ice on his hands.
This comparison is absolutely helped along by the fact that he is very good about using consent language when he is dealing with me. He knows my history of medical trauma, he knows people have hurt me by putting their hands on me before, therefore everything is narrated to me so I know what to expect, and feel comfortable and safe with tapping out at any time. Which in all honesty, I’ve rarely had to do with him. There’s been a few moments when I’ve very calmly had to tell him “that is approaching a Red Feeling for me” and he’ll ease up or switch up what he’s doing to alleviate the pain/switch to something else. But it’s always been like, a good pain. Never something that would do me injury or would register above the overall background chronic pain tolerance.
The only other time I’ve really tapped out was when he was working on removing muscle adhesions from my throat and the pressure so close to my windpipe was making me antsy and I needed to take a break. But I’ve never had to straight up safeword because something was too painful.
Until today when he tried to do a hip evaluation and I startled the fuck out of everyone by screaming “STOP RED HARD STOP HARD STOP!”
My right hip hurt (both are inverted and rotated) but it was more of a “tight muscle” feeling, and after a few minutes of doing the stretches and him applying some pressure to some tender spots, it eased up enough that he was nearly able to hike my knee up over my shoulder to sit flat on the table, something I haven’t been able to do since my teens/very early 20s when I still worked the holistic circuit and did yoga training multiple times a week. My left side? We didn’t even get through the basic resistance stretches before I was having a meltdown and begging him to stop because I was in so much pain I couldn’t stand it.
It was like no other pain I’ve experienced before, and y’all know my history with painful experiences. I honestly never thought something would ever top having two root canals done without anesthesia but this was something else entirely. This was “the sun is going nova in my hip joint and there will be no survivors” levels of white hot agony just flaring out from my pelvis to consume the world.
Basically he thinks the hip is out and grinding itself to pieces against the socket. I need an x-ray fairly quickish, which we’re working on, along with hopefully being able to fix it. Cause that was… yeah. Yeah. I am not about that. And neither is he.
Like his alarm was evident, and I’m so thankful he’s a calm and consummate professional because I could have seen someone else dropping my leg in a panic in that situation. Instead he talked me through it, letting me know it was okay and the pain would stop in a second, he just needed me to stay calm and let him move slowly because he didn’t want to jar the joint any further. As soon as my leg was flat on the table he was lighting quick down at my eye level going “what do you need, how do I help?” and doing everything he could to make sure I was okay. At which point he called a halt to all physio moves and went with pure pain relief massage for the rest of the session.
I felt like a tit afterwards with my head in the little hole thingy just staring at the floor, and apologized for being a big baby and not being able to finish the exercise, and he straight up stopped what he was doing, knelt down beside me again, tapped me on the back of the head so I’d look up and then very seriously with a lot of gentle concern said, “never apologize for being in pain and protecting yourself. Your comfort is a part of your recovery.” and honestly it’s been six hours and I’m still thinking about that.
“Things my physio has said to me”:
[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]
[part 4][part 5]
[part 6ish] [part 6.5]
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