Thursday, March 7, 2013

LINDA MEETS ABIGAIL BROWN AT SITE SANTA FE




LINDA MEETS ABBIE (ABIGAIL BROWN FROM THE SPASMODIC TORTICOLLIS CLINIC) AT SITE SANTA FE:
Maybe it was 5 years ago? My cervical torticollis was at it's worst and I needed help. During one of my desperate calls to Howard Thiel, he told me about an alternative clinic for cervical dystonia in Santa Fe which was founded by Abigail Brown. That sounded perfect and I decided to go. So one supposedly nice March day, i was on my way to Santa Fe to go to Abbie's clinic from upstate NY, but the plane couldnt take off from Albany because of bad weather and I had to drive another hour back home! That's an hour up, checking in, shoes off, waiting for 2 hours etc and they said, come back tomorrow! The spasms in my neck were beyond acute and so I called Abbie and said, the plane wont take off, and because of this I will miss a day of your clinic because I am a day late, my basement is flooded and the spasms in my neck are at a 2138793 decibel level. That translates as off the chart. So she suggested that I take the correspondence version of her clinic, which I did and still do. A working relationship was started and because of all of the help I was receiving, I was always wanting to meet Abbie and Howard, my mentors in this journey.

A few years ago I went to Howard's Symposium near Newark Airport and met Howard, the founder of the Torticollis website and organizer of the yearly conference, and just a few weeks ago I met my other teacher, Abbie, while I was performing in Santa Fe.

This time I was able to fly to the southwest and was feeling so much better that I was presenting one of my performances at SITE, Santa Fe. In fact, my endurance chops re-surfaced and much tomy surprise, I could sit on stool, on top of a mechanical lift for 7 hours and "belt out" Linda Ronstadt songs, accompaning the CD. For 7 hours! With cervical dystonia! It was quite cold that day so I performed for 3 hours outside and the other 4 inside. All of this happened while I sat on a macho man-toy, which went into the air until after 7 hours I was 14 feet off the ground.

I had emailed Abbie and told her about my show and the performance and an hour into the "belting out", I looked down and there was my mentor and teacher, Abigail Brown! I was elated and excited and felt actually proud that as a graduate of her program, I could do such an intense and difficult event! She said, "You look good." And I know she meant the position of my non-botoxed neck and I then asked her a few questions. One about the neck stretching machine which she said she used daily, and a question about a gel that I got from an apothecary pharmacy which has AMI-BAC-DEXT-GAB 2%,2%10%10%. In her incredible expertise, Abbie said, " The AMI is on the dont use list." And I was so happy to see her, learn from her, and get the information I needed to stop using this med which is counter-indicated for dystonia.

I was lifted 14 feet into the air after 7 hours of performaing, but 34,983 feet into my happy heart after seeing Abbie! Thanks HOWARD AND ABBIE for bringing us all home to health.

Linda Mary Montano


No comments:

Post a Comment