Massage and Spa treatment in Brisbane

Although a spa seems like the perfect place for someone recovering from serious illness, most are very
wary of taking bookings from people who have been treated for cancer. Thankfully handfuls have
changed their approach. What you need, said my friends as I made my first tentative steps back on to
dry land after the stormy seas of cancer treatment, and is a break. They were right: and where more
appropriate than a spa, an undemanding short holiday with health at its centre? A day of pampering and
massages was exactly what the doctor ordered. But there was a catch. I am the veteran of many spa
trips, and on every previous occasion I have breezily ticked a “no” in that tedious questionnaire that
precedes your treatment. Recent operations? None. On medication? No. Any history of cancer, diabetes,
heart disease, epilepsy or allergies? No, no, no, no and no. Only now it’s different. Yes, I have had recent
operations; and yes, I am on medication. And yes,
sadly I do have a history of cancer. And I know that ticking all those boxes in the waiting room. Means
I’ll be unlikely to be ushered through to the treatment room. Because spas, on the whole, are scared of
people like me. Most do not have therapists trained, specifically in how to treat them, and the default
position in most spas is to refuse many treatments – massages especially. The fear is that massage can
push cancer cells round the body: it’s nonsense, and in fact my radiotherapy for breast cancer came
with a course of massages from a specially-trained Macmillan therapy team. As my therapist there said,
massages would hardly be offered as part of an oncology treatment package if there was any danger in
it. Not every spa manager seems to realize this, but the good news is that some spas have started to.
About three years ago Abi Wright, founder of spabreaks.com, got a call from a “distraught” customer,
recently recovered from cancer, who had just been turned away from the reception desk on a spa break
having innocently ticked all those cancer and medication and recent operations boxes on the health
form. “I did some research and realised cancer is a bit of a taboo subject at spas; and I phoned a few
spas up and said, this is insane,” says Wright. “Spas are ideal places for people to go when they’re going
through grueling cancer treatment or recovering from it, and what the spas need to do is wise up on
what’s OK and what’s not OK, and to offer staff who know what they’re talking about rather than some
18-year-old therapist who tells a client, in front of a waiting room full of people, that she couldn’t touch
her with a bargepole because she’s ticked the cancer box.” Several spas around Britain have taken up
Wright’s gauntlet, so off I headed to one of them, Penny hill Park Hotel in Surrey. Its “recovery retreat”
began well –before I even arrived, I received a phone call from one of the therapists who – hurrah! –
knew perfectly well that massage isn’t dangerous for someone in my position, and booked me in
straightaway for a therapeutic massage with aromatherapy oils (exactly the same treatment I enjoyed at
the Macmillan centre). I also opted for a reflexology session, which again I’d found relaxing as part of my
oncology treatment package.
10.0 Hydrotherapy and its Benefits in the Spa