SD Thai Massage (Western and Lemon Grove)

Back in 2008, I noticed some numbness and weakness on one side of my right arm. My doctor at Cedars ordered an MRI which revealed a c6/c7 herniation. He ordered all of these procedures that cost my insurance company tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, the wonderful doctors over at Cedars allowed me to eat all of the Vicodin I could possibly want. It was as if I had a magical, never ending jar of narcotic painkillers in my medicine cabinet. While I appreciate the gesture, I don't think it is a medically sound decision to prescribe a tub full of these oblong yellow pills to people. The doctors at Cedars then convinced me to get a series of epidurals in my spine. This was a major procedure over there, and it even involved general anesthesia, and a bevy of well qualified medical personnel running hither and thither around the procedure room making sure that things were sterile and that all their instruments were in order. While the first one seemed to help quite a bit, the subsequent injections made me irritable, angry and super aggressive. I felt so out of control, that I had to take time off of work while the poison corticosteroids were leached from my body. For a while there, they told me that I was a good candidate for neck surgery, but elective surgery has always made me feel like something was rotten in Denmark. They soon stopped the fool-talk of surgery after Blue Shield of California dropped me like a hot turd and my new insurance, Aetna would not cover said surgery on a cold day in hell. My new insurance company sent me to a new pain specialist over in Koreatown (Anapa Pain Clinic) who talked to me in a more sensible manner, dismissing both surgery and all pain medication during the first consultation at his office. He made a suggestion to get a traction machine ($500), to do some exercises, and get more massages. For the super fucked up days, he told me to use an ice pack. Additionally, he said to resume exercising daily and always keep moving. What great advice! Fast forward to 2012. I still feel some pain and numbness, but the traction machine and the massages are without a doubt the most effective treatments around for me. The massages that I get at this place are exceedingly effective and leave my neck, shoulder and body in general feeling like I don't have an injury at all. There are three different people working here and all of them will have you feeling so great that you won't know whether to laugh or to cry. For sure you will feel much more relaxed all week. Unlike places like Pho Siam where the workers are so lazy, that they won't even use their hands unless you ask them, and tend to press way too hard, this place is a bonafide, professional Thai Massage place. The people here practice Thai Massage the same way that it is taught at Wat Po. They have herbs to add to the massage if you need it at no extra cost. It consists of a lot of stretching, and getting into the meridians of your body to get rid of your pain. Thai Massage is easily a few thousand years old. Western Medicine and Cedar Sinai are much more recent, and much less effective for this type of injury.