Oh, my aching....

#238, yep, this is it.

About 4 weeks ago while running, Ronnie injured his left calf muscle. In reading online, he learned that there are 3 different levels of calf strain (bruise, tear or separation from the bone) and each takes a different length of time to heal. Even though he’s laid off running, it still hasn’t progressed in healing so he’s been pretty frustrated. Friday at his swim lesson he was complaining about his calf injury to his coach,  as well as a tension ache in his back. After hearing his complaints, Mr. Beli (Chinese) gave him the name and phone number of someone who he felt certain could help him. He also speculated that whatever had happened in his leg was causing the problem in his back (perhaps this should have been a clue??)

Since it wasn’t getting any better, he decided to make an appointment with this guy. He called and a woman answered and told him to come on over (this was in the evening). Our driver doesn't work in the evenings so Ronnie made an appointment for the following morning at 9am. She first tried to make it at 7am, then 8am but he explained that he couldn’t make it until after 9am when our driver arrived.

reception/treatment/waiting room - no diplomas in sight

So Saturday morning Ronnie and Dadang found the place without a problem, though he still had no idea what to expect. As he entered the front room (which turned out to be the reception/waiting/treatment room all rolled into one) he was immediately greeted by a funky odor and told to take a seat while “the man” worked on another patient who was in obvious pain. After he finished working on the poor guy, Ronnie said he walked around the partition and came back with a pink pill which the man dropped into his shirt pocket. The guy who was in pain held out his hand with an undetermined amount of money and gave it to the man that worked on him.

 shoulder works

Ronnie was up next. He listed his complaints (back, left calf) but instead the guy started working on his hand! Ronnie reiterated it was his back that was hurting so after massaging his hand and arm for about 15 minutes, he moved to his back for maybe 15 minutes, occasionally dipping his hand into a mixture of water and baby oil. Lastly he moved down to the calf and massaged that for another 15 minutes or so.

getting the "treatment" on his calf

When Ronnie got up to leave, he asked how much he owed and the man indicated there was no charge. Ronnie gave him 50,000 rupiah and he seemed very pleased (that’s about $6US). He dropped it into some kind of small container next to the short stool he sat on.

Amazingly his back and leg felt better afterwards. So today after church we dropped by and the whole process was repeated. I looked around to see if there were any diplomas on the wall or anything that might indicate what type of training he had. Didn’t see anything. I asked him if he had a business card when we got up to leave and surprisingly he produced one. On it was a line drawing of 2 hands working on another hand along with his name A. Kostaman and address. So I guess you could say that we’re still not sure what exactly he does, but whatever it is, he's been doing it for a long time.

He actually seemed quite nice and we even learned that he has a daughter in San Antonio where her husband is stationed at Lackland AFB. We also learned that he works 7 days a week from 7am-7pm, 3 weeks of each month in Bandung and 1 week of each month in Jakarta. Ronnie said people were coming and going each time he went (he’d already treated a man from Switzerland this morning before we arrived and a young Muslim woman was on her way in as we were leaving). Apparently, business is good.

So we’ll see how the leg and back do now. If we were at home, he would have already seen his preventative medicine specialist who would have probably already ordered an MRI to take a look at his calf muscle. This will sure be a heck of a lot cheaper – if it works!!