Several clients have asked me what inspired me to become a massage therapist. The short story is that a massage student in Colorado helped me with my recovery from a knee surgery.

The very long story might be a bit more exciting for some. I was in a sword fight during the last show of my first season with Castlewall Productions. We were a stage combat troupe that did our version of Prince John's coronation tournament as it pertained to the Robin Hood story. I played Brian Dubois Gilbert which is the bad guy in Ivanhoe. In my fight with Will Scarlett he rolled over my left knee and it began to swell up. 30 minutes later I could no longer walk.

I was carried to my car and 3 days later still couldn't walk so I hobbled to my doctor. She took xrays and then drained my knee and found blood. She decided I must have torn something so she arranged for an MRI. On Sept 10th 2001 I got a phone call from my doctor stating that they found bumps on my femur just above my knee and suspected that it might be bone cancer. Of course most remember what happened on Sept 11th 2001.

I got the MRI and the tech immediately looked at it and told me I did not have bone cancer. What a relief. By the time I got back home though they called me and said that I had new aggressive growth on my bone so the tech was wrong.

I did indeed have bone cancer. 

They then sent me to the Colorado Limb Specialists where Dr Cynthia Kelly looked at all the info and told me that I did not have bone cancer but did in fact have a large tumor in my knee that was rubbing up against the bone causing scar tissue and that was my new aggressive growth.

She said she will just open me up, cut out the tumor, scrape the bone clean and sew me back up no problem. 

The biopsy proved the tumor to be benign which was great since she said I had been most likely growing it for around 13 years at least.

I got the surgery and my knee was swollen and I could barely bend it. She said that there was nothing wrong with my knee and that I should walk as much as I can to work out the swelling.

A coworker worked just a cubicle down from me said he was in massage school He had just learned scar tissue work, range of motion therapy and lymphatic drainage and asked if he could use my knee for practice. I didn't know what any of that really was but it sounded good so I said yes.

I hobbled up the stairs to his apt barely able to bend my knee but honestly 1 hr later I was walking down almost able to touch my heel to my butt again and went back to sword fighting that weekend. It was amazing.

Fast forward to later when the economy fell out of Denver and I was laid off and gotten a job with a delivery company that I absolutely loathed. I moved from the Denver dock to the Milwaukee dock in 2003 and hated the job even more. I decided I needed to find something that I liked to do again and somehow massage therapy came to mind. I felt that if I could do for just one person what that massage student in Colorado did for me then it would all be worth it. As it turned out there was a massage school nearby within walking distance that was starting classes that just happened to fit my schedule. By June of 05 I was graduated and became a massage therapist and haven't looked back since.

I love what I do and that is why I specialize in pain relief and postural alignment.