One of my patients who was being treated for low back and butt pain is married to a man who was complaining of burning sensation in his upper and lower leg and hypersensitivity on the skin of his thighs accompanied by numbness on the outside of his thigh and pain and numbness in his butt. He had already had his fourth back surgery and was on very heavy doses of two strong medications because he couldn’t sleep at night without them. His wife was becoming alarmed, especially since she was holistically minded and fearful about possible pain drug addition for him because his symptoms were becoming chronic.

She asked me if I could help or did I know what these symptoms indicated. I felt pretty certain that the numbness in the thigh was caused by entrapment of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve. The symptoms were classic. The surgery that had been performed wouldn’t have helped because the nerve gets entrapped in the pelvis, not in the spine.

On his last trip to the ER, the doctor suggested that he start looking into alternative therapies. He heeded the advice and came in for a visit. We talked about his symptoms and I explained what I thought it could be. He is a very smart man with some medical knowledge and an analytical mind and what I said made sense to him so we proceeded into treatment.

I explained to him that Neuromuscular Therapy was not massage, and that the treatment would be uncomfortable. He replied that it couldn’t be worse than the pain he was experiencing and told me to go ahead, just make him better!!!

Read the next post to learn what the treatment entailed and how we proceeded.