Woman Visited Unlicensed Thai Massager Dr Happy For Leg Pain But Ended Up Even Unhappier

If you’ve been reading our stuff, you may have noticed that lately we’re nursing the reputation that massages cause some bad things to happen.

No hidden agenda; we’re just reporting what’s been going on around these parts, and also warning our dear readers to find out exactly what you’re paying for when you step into one of these parlours in future.

Case in point: We’ve talked about how a Thai massage parlour induced a miscarriage in a pregnant lady and how a man left a barber shop with breathing difficulties after accepting a free neck massage from his barber (that’s here and here).

This time, we’re throwing Thai massages under the bus again with a lady who found herself crippled after a rough session.

What Happened

Last year December, Pranom Tiengtrong, a mother of one, was experiencing some pain in her legs so she sought out therapy from a massage parlour in Rayong, Thailand.

There, she met a masseur, Kiattisak Chaiwimon, who goes by the moniker “Dr Happy”, and a rather rough massage ensued. Take a look:

In the video, Ms Tiengtrong is seen lying on a mat as “Dr Happy” stamps on both her legs. What’s more, he persisted even after the customer cried out in pain and asked him to stop.

He was also seen tugging roughly at her right leg, causing her to slide across the mat.

Confused & Lost

According to the Daily Mail, Ms Tiengtrong said “I thought it was going to be a normal massage with kneading and squeezing the muscles. I was a little confused when he asked me to lie down on the ground.”

However, I’ll say that all this on its own isn’t too damning, because “walking massages” as “Dr Happy” calls them, aren’t too uncommon (the number of quotation marks in this sentence makes things sound so fishy, though).

But the fact that Ms Tiengtrong’s cries of agony went unheard is probably not a good idea, because extreme pain, in case you didn’t know, can be a sign that things have gone horribly wrong.

The Damage

The 46-year-old mother left the massage parlour with her legs feeling worse than before.

And no wonder, because the X-rays at the hospital revealed her femur to be broken and her left angle fractured and dislodged from the joint.

This was a huge problem for Ms Tiengtrong, who is a hawker for a living.

She said she “could not stand for a long time because my leg would be unbearably painful”, and it impeded her job since she “could not cook or sell the food anymore”.

And to top it all off, her lack of income caused her husband to take off. She is wheelchair bound now and can’t even receive the treatment she needed because the medical costs of around 130,000 baht ($5,553 in SGD) are out of her reach.

Well-intentioned

Her neighbours then tried to contact the masseur for medical compensation since they, rightly, held him responsible for her injuries. When that proved futile, they reported him to the police.

He was finally tracked down at his home recently by Rayong Provincial Health officers. Incidentally, his home was also where his “massage parlour” is.

Now however malicious it seemed, Kiattisak (Dr Happy) claimed he was genuinely trying to provide the therapy he was paid to.

According to the Daily Mail, he claimed to have treated thousands of customers, saying, “I remembered her coming to me and telling me that she had terrible pain around her hips. I touched her bone and knew immediately that her hips were slipped out of a joint.”

He also admitted that the cause of Ms Tiengtrong’s bone fractures might be him stepping on her too hard, which he did since he was trying to “adjust the bones into the right place by treading repeatedly on her thighs.”

Ouch!

“She cried in pain for many time but I told her to hang on because I felt the bones were almost connected to the joint. I didn’t realise that she cried because her bones were broken”, he added.

About Ashiatsu, or “walking massages”

Kiattisak said that he studied the “walking massage” from a respected parlour and that he was ‘famous in the neighbourhood’ for his massage.

And as mentioned, ashiatsu isn’t too uncommon a practice, and is, ironically, supposed to more comfortable than normal deep-tissue massages.

So what went wrong here?

With the help of Google, specifically this site, I found some things that weren’t going in Ms Tiengtrong favour:

1. She is quite petite, and the site advised people weighing less than 140 pounds (63 kg) to avoid this type of massage, because the massage therapists will have a hard time holding their weight off the customer for the whole session
2. She may have weak bones, maybe even weak enough to be osteoporotic, but guess what, she can’t declare it before her “walking massage” because she wasn’t told it would be happening in the first place!

So basically, “Dr Happy” probably shouldn’t have proceeded with what he most likely thinks is the greatest form of massage therapy ever. And he probably did because he wasn’t properly trained.

The Takeaway

So, Kiattisak has since been fined for opening a medical facility since both him and his house didn’t have the proper licensing, him being a non-registered traditional medic, and his house as a non-licensed massage shop.

And you guys, please do your research before walking into one of these places. Massages have many proven healing properties, but that’s assuming they’re performed by a qualified practitioner!