Cranio What?

Charlie walks all over now. Even when he falls, he pushes himself back up and starts walking again. When he walks his head is usually pretty straight. If he's sitting or playing or sleeping, though, it's a little bent to the right. This persistent torticollis, or muscle tightness on one side of the neck, is the only reason he still qualifies for physical therapy from Early Intervention. (That, and if we wanted to do electrical stim for his facial nerve, but no one seems to think that will work at all.) Dr. J. seems unconcerned about the head tilt, but I don't like it. I told Mary E., Charlie's physical therapist, that I wanted to work on it some more.

We took Summer's dry-erase easel and drew a grid on it, and stood Charlie in front of it. Mary E. showed me how his hips and shoulders are nicely aligned; the problem is just from his neck up, and some small portion of it is an optical illusion because of his crazy ear. But his head definitely tilts a little to the right. Mary E. told me to apply gentle pressure to the base of Charlie's skull while he is sleeping. This is something called craniosacral therapy. As I understand it, there is fluid in your spinal cord and brain that sort of has its own pulse. Since Charlie's skull is ever so slightly squished on one side, the fluid may be bottlenecking there, disrupting the natural rhythm. Mary E. says that with very gentle pressure on certain body parts, one can restore the healthy flow of this fluid. It sounds a little flaky, but harmless, and Mary E. herself is not the least bit flaky, so I agreed to try it. Every other night I sneak into Charlie's dark room and hold his head in my fingertips. I only stay for a few minutes, counted on the blue glow of my watch.

Today Mary E. worked on Charlie as he was napping. "He was so good!" she told me. "He let me work on his chest and he didn't wake up at all." She can definitely feel where the problem is. "I do this thing where I pull on the ears, and normally you feel like you're going to pull the kid's ears right off," she said, "but on this side (the right, the torticollis side), it was like he was pulling back!" She's going to come back and do it again.

I think it's helping to relax his neck, but it might be my imagination. The whole thing might be my imagination--I just combed through my recent photos to find one to insert here, but Charlie's head looks straight in all of them. But it's not my imagination. We mothers know. I remember hearing the author of Flags of our Fathers speak at a conference. He said the mother of one of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima identified him by his fatigue-clad rear end. She'd diapered it enough to know. She was right.

Comments

[Nice Guy Tom]

Hey Jill, I read Flags of Our Fathers a few years ago when a friend recommended it. I remember that part of the book clearly. It was pretty amazing that mother was quietly confident it was her son in the picture even though for years everyone was telling her she was wrong!