A Reflection Of Our Times – A Typical Case History

“Mr Roo referred me to you, said you are the clinic of last resort, as you fix problems others don’t or can’t, and he knows you will listen to me.

“I love my grandkids. I love my garden, I love to feed to birds, the hedgehogs, it’s my world, my life.  Right now, I can’t do any of this because it’s agony and I don’t have a life.

I get phone calls from my doctor who prescribes drugs that don’t work. I have just seen a private surgeon at £19 a minute. He didn’t listen to me.  I wanted help, I wanted him to listen, I wanted to know what I could do, who I should see. He just said nothing could be done with total disinterest, that surgery at my age was a waste of time and so was physiotherapy.”

Isn’t this sad? No one listened, no one gave her any hope.

“I have a scan, here, look, I don’t understand what it means. Can you help.”

This is what we did…………………

The scan showed a narrowing in a disc and some of it had squashed out like toothpaste, crushing a nerve in a rather arthritic little spinal joint. This little tiny part of her back meant she couldn’t pick up her grandkids, walk far, sleep or bend over gardening.

A detailed assessment showed us where the physical problem was, her general fitness and how she moved (her biomechanics). We needed to gently open up her locked-down spinal joint, quell the inflammation in her disc, and release the muscle contracture trapping the nerve.

Just as important as the physical treatment, we also needed to explain how other aspects of her health and mental stress were affecting her and her pain. To do this we explained the 4 Keys to Health: mindset, fitness, food and lifestyle and how a simple red, amber, green traffic light approach could help guide her to take the positive steps to better health. This in turn would help protect her from COVID and her pain.

We gave the patient her life back

After just 3 sessions she was no longer in physical pain and perhaps more importantly, had got her life back, comfortable in the knowledge that she had been listened to and that what was important to her had been understood. In her sessions, we gave:

• Advice on the relevant keys and how to move to 4 green keys.
• Counselling to reduce stress/ improve the immune response
• Laser to ease the pain and help reduce the inflammation.
• Electroacupuncture to reduce the pain and inflammation
• IMS dry needling to cut through fascia and remove muscle contracture, taking pressure off the nerves
• Exercise to help reduce the disc bulge with specific manual mobilisations and robotics
• Deep oscillation massage to soothingly reduce inflammation further
• Gentle hands on healing to further boost the response