Trigger points

My acupuncturist, yvonne, demonstrates how to massage the vascular area around my pec/ armpit area.

I can't speak for every quadriplegic, but for me physical attention and massage helps so much with my blood flow, sensation, and nerve pain. Especially when it's cold and snowy like this, I rely on being physically moved in therapeutic Ways such as these to circulate my blood and keep me warm. Even though I don't have 100% sensation everywhere on my body to physical touch, I can still get very cold simply because I can't move myself and use my own body heat whenever I want. I think a common misconception is that people in wheelchairs do not need the same kind of physical attention because it is assumed we cannot feel like a"" Normal person. The truth is, think about if you were to sit all day long, you would probably want a back massage by the end of the day… and combined with back pain there's the added annoyance of trigger points which for me are now migrating from my shoulder blades to my lymph nodes area all around my armpits and Down the side of my upper body. If you were to grab in this area, I would have a huge spasm, and for the most part I'm OK with spasms because it gives me a little bit of hope about moving again. We are always working on getting my spasms to act out buy triggering them and this seems to help my body to calm down. Yvonne uses a rose quartz mushroom stone here to Press on different triggerpoints around my problem areas stimulate and release my spasms. Since we are not able to access these areas as well in my massage chair, I stayed in bed for this. I had already been up for a couple hours, we just transferred me back to bed. And then back to my wheelchair! Thankfully I don't have to worry very much about my blood pressure anymore… it used to be every transfer my blood pressure would drop and I was told I would probably have to take the blood pressure medication midodrine on a regular daily basis. I am read VERY Glad that I don't need to do that anymore, because as you can imagine it is very exhausting and inefficient to always be about to pass out during transfers..