I broke my
sacrum in a freak accident at the age of 18. It took almost three months to heal during which I could not sit comfortably and
often rode kneeling facing backwards in the seat to travel. I whined, griped about
back pain and took pills and even non-prescription drugs.
Through the
years, I also travelled, climbed mountains, Scuba dived, taught school, roller-bladed, skied and had adventures generally allowing the energy of youth to keep me moving. In 1975 using "Be Here Now" by Ram Das, I started doing yoga. Osteoarthritis developed in my knees starting in 1977.
In 1989, now 45 years old and still griping, I decided that I
wanted to live longer with less pain. In May 1989, a physiotherapist started me onto an exercise program targeting my back.
I found exercising
to be boring so, in order to do it faithfully, I combined it with watching t-v. I became so accustomed to
exercising in the living room that even our guests would be exposed to my
routine. When I returned to the physiotherapist in September, 1990, I said “I feel
better, I feel stronger, but my back still hurts a lot”. He poked me in my jelly-like soft abdomen. “What are you doing about these muscles?” he said. I replied,
“I don’t like sit-ups”. There were a pile of non
sit-up exercises for my core. As I faithfully continued adding the new exercises to the other, I experienced a
pain-free week in April 1991, six months later.
It didn’t
always remain pain free. I learned to change many of the ways that I did things
– I changed position a lot, I stopped the car every hour on long trips, I put a
foot bar in front of counters and desks, I lost ten pounds of weight, I used
heat and saunas. I did not stop exercising – in fact, I added a yoga routine in
order to increase both strength and flexibility. Sometimes I took naproxen, a
non-steroidal pain and inflammation reliever.
Osteoarthritis is a progressive
disease and exercise didn’t “cure” it. Exercise does, however, make our bodies
release endorphins which are natural pain-killers. This seems to be a good
thing.
In November
2011, I fell on ice and severely jarred my pelvis and lower back. I struggled
back to mobility with the help of my physician, the physiotherapist and a
chiropractor. I had to severely modify the exercise program at first but by
March 2012 I was well enough to go to Mali with a medical team. Unfortunately, I fell again on uneven pavement while running to avoid tanks during the military coup. When I eventually was able to walk
and return to Canada, I made appointments with the physiotherapist, my
physician, the back institute specialist, the chiropractor and a mental health
counsellor (for PTSD prevention).
In May the back
specialist insisted upon a back x-ray, reviewed it with me, emphasizing the deformities. The radiologist had read it as having “osteoporosis, severe
osteoarthritis and a 60 degree roto-scoliosis”. In short, a very bad back. At that time, I was using
two canes, doing modified exercises and, seeing myself as an invalid. He merely reinforced the importance of acknowledging that I had a severely misshapen back. The view from there was
dismal. I was depressed.
A month
later, my eldest daughter chided me when i was whining, “so which of these things is acute? Aren’t
they all things that you have had for years?”
She was
correct – in fact, the scoliosis had probably been present since my
teens.
At yoga in
June, the instructor asked that each person “create an intention” for the
class. I wanted to “see my back from the outside” and erase the vision of the x-ray. During that session, I was able to have a glimpse of a
better back but only a glimpse. I had to consistently
and mindfully re-envision my back.
Meanwhile I
was learning more about backs. While I was recovering enough to fly home from
Mali, my partner was collecting material about backs. A foot high stack of
literature was sitting on the living room table. I found new and sometimes
non-back exercises that helped backs. Stride – who knew that a long stride was
hard on the back? – I modified my walking. I became stronger and soon there was only one
cane and then often none!
The
real epiphany – and the reason that I’m writing this – came in the summer of
2015. I returned from seeing my family physician in Saskatoon. He had asked me
how much pain I had – I had replied that it was almost always a 2/10, sometimes
a 6/10, never 0/10.
Two out of
ten all the time? This didn’t make sense. A re-set was in
order. If I was always 2/10, then 2/10 was my zero. Using Melzack’s gate theory
of pain, I reasoned that a person should be able to simply re-set the “gates”. While
I could not change the abnormalities in my back, perhaps I could change my
perception of the pain. In a sense that is what distraction, music, movement, and eating does to
decrease awareness of pain. In this case, every time I became aware of the pain in
my lower back I mentally “closed the gate” just above the painful area. At
first this was quite tedious and took quite a bit of effort.
But in fact,
the process took less than six weeks! In mid September I realized that the gate
seemed to be permanently closed. Most of the time, I had no pain. It was so hard to believe that
I told no one. Today I remain free of that nagging low back pain that I have associated with my broken sacrum.
Not that I
have quit exercising, weight control and all of the other good things including
moving around – even at meetings, I get up and walk to the back of the room.
On my way through an airport months later, looking for something to read, I picked up Norman Doidge’s “The
Brain’s Way of Healing”. Dr. Doidge explains how what I did works, not just for me
but others as well! I heartily recommend it.
