Friday, May 12, 2006

Massage and Alternative Medicine

I got this strange case.
When I was having an appendectomy, the time when I was opened the peritoneum, there was a bleeding from the inside of the abdomen..
I asked my assistants, did I cut something?
Both of my assistants said, No.
So I was explored the abdomen, not just for finding the appendix vermiformis but also to find the source of the bleeding.
I found both of them.
And the bleeding came from a little spread of the serosa part of the colon.
The appendix vermiformis was not perforated as I and my consultant were thought before (Since the leucocyte level was 18900/mm3 / very high..).
So after the operation I asked the patient, a-9 year-old boy.
Did you have a massage on your abdomen?
He answered Yes, ...... (*not proper to mention his name) did it. Because I felt pain on it.
So, I called her mother and asked again the same question.
His mother told me that the kid felt pain at the lower right part of the abdomen after playing soccer, so she thought It was a trauma then she brought her child to have a massage..(actually the pain was caused by the process of appendicitis)
Then I got another patient who had a blunt trauma after a motor-cycle accident. He felt pain at the upper left part of the abdomen. He was having a massage 3 times at the part he felt the pain. After three days his condition was getting worst and his brother took him to the hospital. I made a Von-Slanny test to him also checked his abdomen tenderness. I suspected there was a massive bleeding was caused by the rupture of intra abdominal organ. When we opened his abdomen, there was a rupture of the spleen and we did a spleenectomy on this patient.
Again, the common people treated pain on their abdomen by having massage.
This is the last example. When I was having my senior-clerckship in Obsteric and Gynecology Dept. there was a case of the death of fetus. The mother of this fetus was having a massage during her pregnancy. The residents said, it is common thing in Countries or Kampungs that people like to massage the abdomen during pregnancy...
This mother and other mothers from the kampungs were never realized or known that massage would give a trauma of vessels that could be the cause of fetal-death during pregnancy.
I was visited the Internal medicine's Ward because I was gotten a consultation from there. I was asked the nurses there to have a USG and thorax photo for this Mammae Carcinoma's patient to determine her Cancer stage. But then I got this news that the patient was dead last night. So I told the nurses, she was in the terminal stage. This patient was refused an operation 2 years ago and tried to have an alternative medicine..that never cured her..
There are many of cases of patients that refused to have a surgical treatment,then tried an alternative medicine. They came again to surgeon with terminal stage that made us can't cure their disease with our best efforts. Some were getting better by handicap (usually fracture's cases), some were died.
My Oncology consultant said, there are good news in the magazines of people that getting better by alternative medicine and other people that thought they have same disease, decided to try. It seemed that alternative medicine was succeded and modern medicine treatment did nothing. But there wasn't any record that people came to doctor after having a terminal stage after trying so many alternative medicines (That actually their number is bigger than the succesful ones..)
I don't refuse the alternative medicine, because there are so many misteries of the health itself.
I agree with China' s people who combine their ancestry knowledge with modern medicine.
But something that come to my brain is (from my surgery's background) :
Why people was really scared with the operation?
Why this can be happened?
If someone out there can answer this question..

2 comments:

urhuckleberry said...

for the have in sumatra area, the alternative treatment for theri sickness is: go to malaysia, cheaper & better services.

with a lot of story about medical malpractice in indonesia without any legal solution, people try to find the alternative. medicine man for the poor, foreign medical doctor for the have.

btw, too much medical term, cannot understand what you explain :-D

Genie Surgeon said...

Which part/term that you don't understand?