The Remedial Massage Guy Rockingham

24/05/2026

My one night out dancing before heading back into hospital, this time to have the right lobe of the liver cut out and repair the bile duct squashed by the tumour.

I thought I might not be able to work again, but not so.
I am now Arthur 2.0
I couldn’t imagine life without working!

Having sorted the blocked arteries in the heart and fixed the liver, I feel like a new person, but I won’t be working quite as much.

Having 2 significant operations in 3 and a half weeks does knock you about, so my timeline for reopening is still end July whilst I recover.

Have a great day!

04/05/2026

Continued from previous post. It was wonderful to come home yesterday. It was SO COLD in the hospital I felt they had put a living body in the morgue by mistake!

I am viewing this as an unpaid long service leave! Pity we couldn’t go to Uzbekistan though!

Now enjoying the simple things in life to the max: taking wife and dog to Lulus followed by a short walk. Now firmly esconced in a chair on the front lawn catching some much needed sun, with Mishka lying in the shade next to me, watching the world go by. But with the school run over, our cul de sac is so quiet we could be in the bush.

Only the sounds of birds, the distant hum of Read St and the vision out the corner of my eye of our daily visitors, the Ibis.

Thanks for the well wishes. But I am just going through my 200k service. Just so lucky I caught it all in the nick of time, and that our health system is way better than many people give it credit for.

Someone mentioned the “big c”. I don’t consider it so at all, approaching it as a minor flesh wound. The key word here is RESECTABLE. That means the c can be cut out and your liver regrows. The liver op is urgent but the heart surgery was a necessary “pre-op” to the liver op. It does delay the liver op, but with my positive mental op, I am sure that I will be practicing again.

Excuse the Keith Richards look, about time for a shave, but I’m in no hurry to do anything, just time to take it slow. If all goes well I’ll take a handful of clients each week from August. Not enough to justify the cost of HiCaps / EFTPOS machine, so payment will be PayID or cash and I’ll give a receipt to claim from Health Funds. That will be the only change.

So that’s it, I won’t post again for a couple of months. Apologies for the detailed accounts, but want people to know how these miracles are now routine.

Still don’t know why the universe decided to pick me to give an extension to my life, but I think it might mean my life’s work is not yet complete. We’ll have to wait and see!

03/05/2026

A hundred or even 50 years ago I’d have carried on joyfully practicing 7 days a week until suffering a heart attack or stroke and for it to be discovered I had liver cancer. Each time you relieve pain in others using your hands, you absorb a little of that pain. And I have worked on many more different people than most practitioners. Being trolled and with the stress that comes with it didn’t help. But it was brilliantly picked up in the nick of time. I have arrived home after urgent heart surgery, and I need liver surgery after that. I will only be taking a few clients a week and will only increase that very slowly. But I will be back. To be continued!

03/05/2026

My slogan is the relief of aches and pains and headaches. Sounds so simple and I try to make it so. However the power of touch works on many systems of your body. We’re not just talking tight muscles and soft tissue such as myofascia, tight tendons etc. The shared article delves a bit deeper!

Why does manual therapy work?

It’s a question most of us have been asked — by patients, by students, sometimes by ourselves mid-treatment.

A 2025 living review in PLOS ONE (Keter et al.) pulled together 62 systematic, narrative, and scoping reviews to map the current evidence.

Manual therapy doesn’t act on one system. It produces measurable responses across the following:

- Neurological
- Neurovascular
- Neurotransmitter,
- Neuroimmune
- Neuromuscular
- Neuroendocrine
- Biomechanical

The strongest, most consistent signals are central, not local: increased pressure pain thresholds at sites distant from treatment and enhanced descending pain modulation.

The biomechanical “joint-out-of-place” model? It's not supported by the evidence. The treatments purporting to do this may help, but for the reasons above, not because the joint has been popped back in.

What this means in practice: our hands are interacting with the central nervous system at least as much as the tissue beneath them and the language we use with patients should reflect that.

The full one-page clinical summary is below 👇

📖 Source: Keter et al. (2025), PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0319586

30/04/2026

Some rough lyrics written under influence of pain meds.
ANGELS OF MERCY

The Angels of Mercy
Have Kept me alive
I’m so lucky to survive
From Mandeep the Mo
And Sweet Caroline
There’s Faye from Samoa
Jenifer from France
Who promised me a dance
Then There is Vicki
The lone token Aussie
These Angels of Mercy
Have come from all over the place
I called them angels
I called them guardian angels too
I also called them archangels
But Angels of mercy describes these heroes the best
I tried to make them smile
I tried to make them laugh
I thanked them often
The cocktails of meds
Really blurred my mind
Open heart surgery does that
But I have run up a dept
I can never repay
All I can say is Thankyou
To The Angels of mercy
And hope this message gets through
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
Angels of mercy

28/04/2026

A trip to GP for ear infection, routine blood test, urgent CT scan, also revealed blocked heart vessels, echo test, MRI, angiogram, petscan, ultrasound, 2 heart operations with liver operation later. I will resume my practice on a part time basis

24/04/2026

Instead of the ANZAC Day Dawn Service, I’m off for a coronary artery bypass grafting. I will hence be known as Arthur 2.0

22/04/2026

Due to the likelihood of imminent urgent surgery followed by a period of recovery, I have provisionally blocked off online bookings for 3 months.

If by happy circumstance, I can reopen earlier, I will let you know.

Apologies for inconvenience, and I hope you find someone who provides good service in the interim.

Although I think everyone else charges more, sometimes much more. Someone advertising THE BEST REMEDIAL MASSAGE IN MANDURAH, for example, charges $145 per hour.

But I am sure there are other practitioners who provide as good or better service than I do.

Sincerely, with apologies for the inconvenience, and with a dose of sadness, as my Trading Name actually defines my identity.

Arthur

18/04/2026

Closed Tuesday to Thursday this week from April 21
Open Sunday 19 and Monday 20 pm

07/04/2026

A quick explanation of the stretch I do on your neck as part of CranioDural Therapy using my new toy!