A car crash saved me: I was in a terrible accident and the treatments I discovered healed more than just my injuries - My story: one reader's success

Natural Health, Dec, 2002 by Jan Weeks

At a Glance

Jan Weeks, 55 Grand Junction, Colo.

Problems: A car accident left me with whiplash, a concussion, and severe ligament damage.

Obstacle: I lived in an area so remote that doctors worked only one or two days a month at the local clinic.

Solution: I went outside of conventional medicine to alternative practitioners, who were not only more accessible but also healed me in unexpected ways.

ON APRIL 7, 1998, THE DAY before I turned 51, my life changed irrevocably. A teenage girl in a pickup truck crashed into my minivan and totaled it. My seat belt kept me from going through the windshield, but the force of the collision shoved my van's engine back almost two feet, bruising ray legs and feet and shortening my left leg almost an inch. The air bag, which had struck me in the face, left me with a concussion. The force of the accident had also torn the muscles and ligaments in my chest and back, and separated my collarbone from my left shoulder, damaging the joint. I later learned that I'd suffered whiplash, too.

An ambulance delivered me from the accident scene to the only clinic in this remote corner of Colorado, even though there was no doctor on duty. The clinic staff offered a diagnosis but no treatment and sent me home. Little did I know that, after several months, I would consider the accident a blessing in disguise.

Incredible Pain

The pain began in earnest a couple of days after the accident, when the numbing effects of adrenaline wore off. My neck felt as though concrete blocks had been piled on my head, compressing my spine. I could barely lift my left arm without screaming. Getting out of bed to go to the bathroom was a major undertaking.

I tried to continue my job teaching seventh and eighth grade English classes, but along with the rest of my pain, I had terrible headaches. And I couldn't remember simple words like "noun," "book," and "lunchroom." I've always been an excellent speller, but now half the words I wrote on the board were misspelled.

After a horrible week of this, I returned to the clinic. A doctor was available just one or two days a month, so I had to see a physician's assistant instead. He didn't know how to ease my pain other than to write me a prescription for drugs. When I told him how much I hated to take painkillers, he said there were a number of alternative therapies that could help me. He offered to write me prescriptions for them so my insurance company would cover the cost, and I gratefully accepted his offer. The first ones he wrote were for massage therapy and chiropractic.

Because I knew I couldn't return to work in this kind of pain, I took the next two weeks off and arranged to teach half-time for the remaining weeks of the school year.

A Chance at Healing

During my first visit to the massage therapist, she gently touched me to evaluate the state of my muscles, and even this light touch was agonizingly painful. Then she very cautiously began to massage the areas that weren't so badly damaged. As I felt my body relaxing, I realized that she could bring me some relief and I decided to continue treatments twice a week.

Shortly afterward I saw a chiropractor who was also an applied kinesiologist, which meant that he used muscle testing to diagnose problems in my nervous, lymphatic, and skeletal systems. At my first session and at each one after that, he had me lie on a mechanical table that repeatedly stretched my body taut and then released the tension. After this repetitive motion had relaxed me (which, oddly enough, it did), he would perform various chiropractic adjustments.

Because some pain still lingered, the physician's assistant gave me a prescription for one more therapy--Trager, a form of bodywork in which a therapist teaches you how to move without pain. I had two or three sessions a week with a Trager therapist, during which he would manipulate my limbs and torso, and I would feel as if each part of my body was being rocked in a cradle. As I relaxed into the movements, I would enter a blissful meditative state. The feeling of relaxation would last for an hour or more after a session, and when I got home I would usually nap or lie back in a rocking chair.

As my treatments progressed, I had good days and bad days. But in only three months, without drugs, I went from being barely able to move my arms and legs to carrying groceries and sleeping through the night.

And I experienced an unexpected side effect from my massage and bodywork treatments: I cried at every session, not just from the physical pain but also from emotional wounds I'd been harboring for many years. Somehow the physical work these practitioners were doing was able to bring emotional healing as well. I felt an enormous sense of relief after every session.

A Learning Experience

It's been four years since the wreck. I Sometimes I have minor pain in my shoulder joint, but nothing that can't be relieved by ice packs and aspirin. I occasionally visit a chiropractor or a massage therapist, but only for maintenance.

Looking back, I can see that the accident brought me good things as well as bad. For many years I had accumulated injuries, major and minor, physical and mental. But without the impetus of the accident, I wouldn't have recognized that old damage, and I wouldn't have met the wonderful healers who made me whole again.