About me

One sunny July day I woke with excruciating back pain.  I’d done some gardening a few days before but the debilitating intensity of the pain didn’t make sense. 

Desperate to recover for my family, I tried everything in those first few weeks, a pattern that continued for many years. I  had surgery and multiple injections and procedures.  I saw osteopaths, chiropractors, physiotherapists, pain consultants, alternative practitioners, but no-one and nothing seemed to help. 

After four, agonising, years I was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and Facet Joint Syndrome but by now I felt stuck, bogged down with destructive MRI images and any number of dire medical predictions about my future. I was told by one consultant that my back was permanently damaged and structurally unsound.  Another concluded that I’d lost half my back muscle and told me that I’d never return to normal life or work again. Another consultant advised me to ‘Go home and reconcile yourself to a life of pain’.  It’s hard to overstate how fearful, isolated and despairing I felt as the decades passed and my pain and disability stubbornly stayed put, impacting not only me but my daughter, husband and friends.  My sense of loss was profound and deeply painful, as was theirs.

As time passed and the symptoms multiplied – neck pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, pelvic pain, scalp pain, IBS, TMJ, dry eye – some interesting patterns emerged. The pain and symptoms always seemed to reduce when I went on holiday, or when I resolved stressful situations.  I noticed these things but didn’t question them, accepting that they were aberrations rather than clues pointing me to another explanation for my pain.