Healing Through Chronic Pain

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Sarah

Mary Ruth Velicki is a fellow pelvic pain sufferer with her own unique healing journey. Determined to find relief from intense, debilitating pelvic pain that plagued her for years, she tried a plethora of treatments from the Western, Eastern, and alternative sides of medicine. To her surprise, she underwent incredible healing that extended beyond her physical body to her full person and experienced many direct connections between her body, mind, and spirit. In Healing Through Chronic Pain, Mary Ruth recounts her five-year journey of “healing through the layers” and personal transformation. Along the way, she shares the treatment strategies she used and the support she received from a team of professionals to move past the pain and to heal her whole being.

I was initially drawn into Mary Ruth’s story because of its similarity to my own pain journey (we even share some of the same caregivers). I’m amazed at the level of detail she recounts of her journey—she must have kept very good notes about her pain, treatments, and personal experiences throughout. But what really deepened my interest was as she began explaining the part of her journey through Eastern medicine and alternative approaches to healing. One of the unique traits that she brings is her background as a physical therapist. This not only allows her to understand and explain her symptoms very specifically and anatomically, but also to approach these non-traditional healing methods with a skepticism that provides objective descriptions of her experiences.

In reading Healing Through Chronic Pain, Mary Ruth brought up concepts that I hadn’t necessarily considered yet made a lot of sense as I thought through my own pain journey. The descriptions of her personal experiences are so complete that it opened up my own thinking to these aspects of healing. Continue reading →

Interview with Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist Dr. Julie Sarton (Part 3)

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Sarah

And here’s the final installment of my interview with pelvic floor physical therapist Dr. Julie Sarton, PT, DPT, WCS. This amazing woman is truly a healer of sexual pain, and in part 3 of my interview she discusses ways you can promote healing on your own.

8. In your experience, how long does it typically take for a patient to see improvement in their symptoms?

There is a wide variety and we always say that usually it depends on how long you’ve had the symptoms. So a patient that walks in through our doors with a 17 year history of complex pelvic pain is very different from a patient that walks in with a 4 week history of pelvic pain or sexual pain. We can see patients anywhere from 4 visits to 2.5 years if they are complex case. Patients will usually see at least some relief, even in the worst cases, in 8 visits or after about a month of treatment, but it can be a long road to full recovery for some patients who have been experiencing pain for a long time.

I have learned to never give up, even on the toughest cases. I once had a patient who had been married for 39 years, but had never consummated her marriage because of her condition. Continue reading →

Interview with Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist Dr. Julie Sarton (Part 2)

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Sarah

My interview with pelvic floor physical therapist Dr. Julie Sarton, PT, DPT, WCS, was filled with so much great information, I couldn’t fit it all into one post. Here is part 2!

4. What could someone dealing with painful sex gain from seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist like yourself?

I think that we are just touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of people who suffer from painful sex. It’s an intimate condition, and is underdiagnosed—some studies suggest that as many as 40% of women suffer from painful intercourse! When we look at sexual pain there are multiple potential causes, but the musculoskeletal system is one of them that I think is routinely missed. I would guess maybe less than 10-20% of physicians (OBGYNs) out there, during the time of the annual exam, ask patients about their sexual life and screen for potential pain. If the musculoskeletal system is found as a driver, a pelvic floor physical therapist is critical in helping that patient achieve a pain free state.

We become one of the primary care practitioners that help. I think it’s important to remember that almost any problem, whether it’s pelvic pain or sexual pain, usually requires multi-modal therapies. So we are one piece of it, rarely working in isolation. You need a village—a team. We need to be working hand in hand with a physician that can help with the medical management, a good psychologist or sex therapist that can deal with the psychological elements that come, and some people need a pain management doctor, or a guided imagery therapist (like we’ve recently integrated), acupuncturist, etc. There is a different team for different patients, but I would say that the physical therapist for many patients becomes one of the mainstays.

5. What should a new patient expect at their first physical therapy session?

The first session—the evaluation—is always going to be the longest. It’s always going to start with an extensive time period to go through the patient’s history. So many of the patients have been bounced from doctor to doctor and never truly been heard. So our goal with that first visit is to hear the entire story. We want not only for them to be heard, but we need to pull all those pieces out from the past that have set the stage and connect the dots to come up with why they’re presenting the way they do. The next piece is the anatomy and we thoroughly explain to the patient because it can be scary and intimidating, so we go through the anatomy with a 3-dimensional model, thoroughly explaining—this is where the pelvic floor is, these are where the muscles go, this is the nerve innervation, these are the functions—so the patient is comfortable with the exam.

At that point we exit and the patient will get undressed and underneath a sheet. But we start externally because you can’t look at the pelvic floor in isolation. We start with the patient’s posture, looking at the pelvic alignment, the external muscles, and the tendons and ligaments. Continue reading →

Interview with Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist Dr. Julie Sarton (Part 1)

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Sarah

I recently had the special honor of conducting an interview with pelvic floor physical therapist Dr. Julie Sarton, PT, DPT, WCS. She is the owner and founder of Sarton Physical Therapy in Orange County, California, and considered an expert in pelvic pain. Before founding her own practice, Julie founded and served as Director of the Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy program and on faculty at the University of California, Irvine. Here she shares part of her story, and what pelvic floor physical therapy encompasses.

1. What made you decide to become a physical therapist, specifically a pelvic floor physical therapist?

When I think back there were two people who had the most influence on my professional life. My brother inspired me to become a physical therapist. He has battled a complex seizure disorder and severe learning disabilities his entire life. Watching him and my parents struggle to find resources to help him lit the fire for me to serve a population that is under-treated in general. After discovering my love of learning for anatomy and the brain (neuroanatomy) in undergrad, I decided physical therapy was my calling and headed off to grad school to get my doctorate in the field.

Once in physical therapy school my late uncle, Dr. James Carter, planted the seed for me to become a pelvic floor physical therapist. He was an OBGYN in South Orange County, a founder of the International Pelvic Pain Society (IPPS), author of dozens of articles and a pioneer in his field.* One of the things I respected most about my uncle was that he thought outside the box and looked at his patients holistically. Continue reading →

The power of your perspective

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Sarah

Have you recognized the power of your perspective? Do you realize the difference that your outlook on life or your perception of a particular situation can make? I have heard this concept discussed many times, and I have believed it on a general level for most of my life. But, it hasn’t been until more recently that I’ve begun to realize just how powerful our perspective can be.

Let me share a very recent example of my own experience of perspective. I have been feeling very overwhelmed these past few weeks, inundated with life stuff, both good and bad. I feel exhausted, wondering why I always seem to end up in the middle of everything, and just wanting a nice long break. Without even realizing it, I have let negative thoughts take over my mind. And not necessarily the obviously negative self-criticism or ‘doom and gloom’ thoughts, just generally negative. Concerns about a friend’s difficult situation and what specific steps she needs to take to get back on track, if only she could see it. Worries about this year’s goals at work and how big and overwhelming they seem. So many constant thoughts that are unconstructive and discouraging, filling my mind so there is no room left for the positive. No wonder I have been feeling so tired and overwhelmed!

Once I realized what I had been doing, I was able to make a conscious effort to flip those negative thoughts through a positive perspective. Continue reading →

Open up those hips

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Sarah

I can think of many good reasons to open up those hips. But, if you are like me that’s easier said than done. I have a tendency to sit too much, which contributes to tension in my hips (among other things). I have learned how to reduce this tension with massage and stretching through yoga. There are so many yoga poses that are great for relieving tension in your hips, but here are just two of my favorites which are good beginner stretches.

Butterfly pose to relieve hip tension

Begin by sitting on the floor with your knees bent outward and the soles of your feet pressed together. This is similar to a cross-legged position, but instead of folding your ankles over each other your feet are pressed together Continue reading →

Skin rolling is not as scary as it sounds

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Sarah

There are many techniques performed in physical therapy that can be incorporated into your own self-treatment regimen. Skin rolling is one of easiest because there isn’t necessarily a wrong way to do it (or at least none that I have discovered). For those of you who think I am referring to some type of ancient form of torture, let me assure you that skin rolling is not as scary as it sounds.

Skin rolling is a type of myofascial release. You can find a lot of information just by typing “myofascial” into your favorite search engine, but here’s my abbreviated definition. The “myo” means muscle and “fascial” is pertaining to the fascia or connective tissue that surrounds every muscle, bone, ligament, and organ in our bodies. Thus, myofascial release is simply a way of releasing tension or constriction in the connective tissue around our muscles. I find skin rolling a pretty interesting technique because it so clearly demonstrates the presence of constricted fascia and muscles (I’ll get into this further after I describe the technique).

Step 1: Show some skin!

Continue reading →

When Sex Hurts There Is Hope

Sharing my journey to provide hope for others

Tag Archives: physical therapy