Oaks Massotherapy & Botanical Spa owner Jeanne Massingill is trained to provide Post-Surgical Scar Treatment Therapy.

 

   The scar on the side of 66-year-old Ellen's left breast is round and bigger than a 50-cent piece. It marks the site where a cancerous lump, along with 35 lymph nodes, was removed from her breast in 2000. After radiation, the surgeon took a section of her lattismus dorsi muscle under her left shoulder blade to reconstruct her breast. Like many women whose lymph nodes are removed during breast cancer surgery, Ellen experienced lymphoedema, uncomfortable swelling under her arm caused by a build-up of lymph fluid. The fluid also formed a seroma that is described as feeling like a baseball is sewn into your armpit.

  But this Cleveland-area resident is smiling as she lay on a treatment table in a room with low lights, soft colors and healing music at Oaks Massotherapy & Botanical Spa in Rocky River. Spa owner, Jeanne Massingill, is massaging Ellen's scar tissue. For seven months following surgery and breast reconstruction, Ellen has come here for therapy.

   “It was very painful when Jeanne started working on the scar,” Ellen says, “but the therapy gave me back normal range of motion in my arm, kept me from experiencing lymphedema, which can be painful and chronic, and helped heal the entire surgical site.”

   Massingill explains that lymph nodes on the left side provide the major drainage for two-thirds of the body. The specific treatment Ellen received at Oaks Massotherapy is Post-Surgical Scar Treatment Therapy. It reduces swelling by helping to drain fluids, disengages the reconstructed area if it has attached to the chest wall, re-establishes blood flow at the surgical site and/or radiated area and markedly reduces pain. “Now I just come here for maintenance,” Ellen notes.

   Western medicine is beginning to recognize the importance of massage therapy in healing surgical scar tissue. “For years people got massage therapy for relaxation and to handle stress,” Massingill says, “but now massage is becoming better known for its contribution to the healing process.”

   Massingill graduated from the Ohio College of Massotherapy and has had nearly 30 years of additional training. She studied the Vodder Lymphatic drainage technique to understand and work with the lymphatic system. She has attended institutes and training programs for every system of the skeletal and muscular body – including neuromuscular pain and cranial sacral pain. She is also skilled in the Ayurvedic techniques. This broad scope of professional training has enabled her to advance the role of massotherapy in healing.

   “The most important thing that a massage therapist has to learn is how to determine when it is not the therapist's work to do,” Massingill says of Post-Surgical Scar Treatment Therapy. She has formed close-working relationships with local physicians and surgeons. “Before I begin therapy, I am very careful to check with physicians about what process has been done. I get their feedback on what I can do and should not do,” she explains. “They are very open when my services are approached in this way. It is due respect.” Based on these important considerations, Massingill develops an individualized treatment plan for each patient working closely with the physician.

   The effects of radiation require additional care. “Radiated tissue is necrotic,” Massingill explains. “There is no blood flow, so it has to be brought back to life. It has to be worked differently than tissue that has not been radiated.”

   Nancy Berry-Peyton of Rocky River underwent a radical mastectomy and removal of 27 lymph nodes in 2001 followed by TRAM flap reconstructive surgery in which the surgeon took a slice of her abdomen including muscle, fat, tissue and blood supply, formed it into a breast and stitched it to her chest wall.

   “My reconstructive surgeon told me that I should find a massotherapist that worked with the lymphatic system – one who could keep (the system) flowing properly so that the scar tissue would not attach to my chest wall,” Nancy says. At her first visit, she was impressed when Massingill began with an explanation. “She educated me on how the lymphatic system works and what she was going to do to open the area and get blood flow and fluid moving,” Nancy says. “My surgeon was happy, and I was happy.”

   Initially, Nancy's reconstructed breast did not feel like it was part of her. “But as Jeanne got the blood and fluids flowing again and the scar tissue started to decrease, I began to feel like the tissue used to reconstruct my breast was part of me. It is part of me now. I feel complete.”

   When Lenny Weiss of Lakewood was in his mid-50s, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, underwent radiation and had radical neck dissection that removed muscle and lymph nodes. “The surgery left a sizable scar. If anything or anyone even lightly touched that scar, it felt like an electric shock as if the nerve endings sent out electrical impulses. It was driving me crazy,” Weiss remembers. Like Ellen, Lenny found the initial therapy difficult. “At first it was very uncomfortable, but after going once a week for four or five weeks, there was a marked improvement. It is now a thousand times more tolerable. My quality of life is better,” he says.

   When her course of therapy is finished, Massingill connects patients with a yoga therapist. “It is the patient's job to learn yoga stretches to continue the range of motion and to keep the blood flowing,” she says.

   Health insurance providers do not yet reimburse patients for Post Surgical Scar Treatment therapy. But that will change as word spreads about its effectiveness and referrals by the medical community pour in.
Oaks Massotherpy & Botanical Spa is located in Rocky River at 21220 Center Ridge Rd # 120 in the Oaks complex. They can be reached at (440) 356-0061. Visit their website at www.oaksbotanicalspa.com.

Photo by Bob Perkoski, www.Perkoski.com.