Before an osteopath can begin treatment, it is important to understand as clearly as possible what is actually happening within the body. An essential part of the osteopathic examination is therefore the initial consultation with the patient.
Patients often arrive well-prepared for an appointment and provide valuable information regarding their symptoms and medical history. However, this information can sometimes be misleading. A complaint may appear to have a clear cause, while it eventually turns out that something entirely different is going on.
A 72-year-old lady visited the practice for the first time due to a very persistent complaint. She had been suffering from bouts of stomach pain for 35 years.
According to the patient, these complaints had arisen after a very significant event involving her daughter. From her perspective, the cause seemed to be primarily emotional in nature.
She had been extensively examined by an internist, including a gastroscopy where a camera was used to inspect the stomach. No serious abnormalities were found, except for a small tear in the diaphragm. Long-term use of Nexium provided some relief, but the symptoms never disappeared completely.
Because osteopaths view the body as a whole, I always try to look beyond just the location where the pain is felt. During my examination, it was not the stomach, but the pancreas that emerged as the structure potentially responsible for the complaints.
The fact that the patient was now using four different medications for diabetes also pointed me in that direction.
But what had actually caused this situation? Was the stress surrounding her daughter truly the cause, or was something else at play?
My examination revealed that there may have been a significant injury to the upper abdomen, likely around the age of thirteen.
When I asked her about this, she explained that as a young girl, she had fallen off her bicycle after a truck hit her handlebars while turning. She had fallen hard, possibly with the handlebars hitting her upper abdomen.
Although she had been deeply shaken, she mainly remembered trying to crawl out from under the truck as quickly as possible. As she put it:
“I can still see those rear wheels coming toward me.”
Sometimes, complaints that have been regarded as “stomach problems” for years ultimately turn out to have a different origin. In this case, the examination pointed more toward the pancreas than the stomach itself.
This is exactly why osteopathy looks beyond just the symptoms: to try and understand the origin of a complaint, even when it may date back several decades.
