Josh Casey: Working in a World of Masks, Gloves, and Gowns

07/08/2024

By Lisa Bakewell

Josh Casey was one of the winners of ABMP’s Massage Is for EveryBody 2023 contest. As we get closer to celebrating Massage Is for EveryBody, July 14–20, 2024, we wanted to share more of Josh’s story, which exemplifies the inclusive values of this campaign. Please join us in celebrating Josh!

“My initial education in massage taught me that cancer was a contraindication,” Josh Casey shared in his winning essay for ABMP’s Massage Is for EveryBody campaign. “A human with cancer was a human not to be touched.” Fast-forward to today, and Casey says it has been his honor to share massage with thousands of cancer patients.

Casey works as the senior massage therapist at the Knight Cancer Institute in Portland, Oregon, and is a certified manual lymph drainage therapist. “I was drawn to oncology massage in the first place having lost my grandparents to cancer when I was quite young,” he says. “And my parents always talked about how helpful hospice care was for them. I was feeling somewhat unfulfilled with my massage career when I took my first oncology class and felt right away that I had found my place. That was in 2011, and I’ve worked in hospitals and/or hospice since.”

Casey describes his world today as one “filled with masks, gloves, and gowns—where most human touch revolves around taking a blood draw, giving a shot, or accessing a port to administer chemotherapy or infuse stem cells.” It’s a world that rarely feels gentle, and nurses never have enough time to spend with patients; they are simply spread too thin.

“As massage therapists, we know our touch brings a myriad of amazing qualities, and I feel the most important thing our touch carries is our humanity,” Casey says. As oncology MTs, sharing a patient’s “fear and the joy, the hope and the mourning, when there is no right thing to say” is what the job is about.

“We go beyond words,” Casey says. “When we reach out and touch someone, they know they are not alone . . . We cannot deny touch to the most sick and vulnerable of our neighbors, as it is the sick and vulnerable who need our touch the most.”

Advice for MTs Considering Oncology Massage

For anyone interested in working as an oncology massage therapist, Casey says education and experience are critical. “The language of the hospital is different from our normal language, and you have to be able to navigate that aspect of the work to feel comfortable there.” But, “it is hard to say what makes for a good oncology or end-of-life massage therapist,” he continues. “You have to have a lot of empathy but not get overwhelmed by it, which is not a very teachable trait.”

As Casey explains it, your ability to “read the room” is an invaluable skill in the hospital. “One patient may have just received great news, and another may have just received awful news—and you may be completely unaware of this. Your ability to recognize and appropriately match the emotional air in the room is a skill that can’t be underestimated.”

Even with training, it’s still hard to know if someone is a good fit for oncology massage, Casey says. “Something I talk about in my massage—in end-of-life classes—is that you need to recognize if this work really fills your cup. This work is absolutely going to drain your cup. Sometimes it’s going to rip your cup out of your hands and smash it on the floor.” So, the big question, Casey says, is: does the work itself fill your cup back up? “If it does, then this can be sustainable for you,” he says. “If you find your cup empty or running low at all, then you should be careful with how much of your time and energy you devote to this work.”

Casey, whose cup remains full, hopes massage therapy is soon a normal part of hospital stays. “It should be in every cancer center and hospice program,” he says, “not to mention pain clinics, children’s hospitals, etc.”

Advice for MTs Considering Oncology Massage

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