Andrew Kay: Fighting back

I’m falling apart at the seams

It’s possibly the busiest week of my year, filming an episode of International Chef Exchange with a chef and team from Vancouver, food festival events and the Brighton Festival all clashing in a way that had already got my head spinning. I was already concerned about how I would manage to fit everything in.
Then snap! I did my back in. Yes, a simple misjudged twist as I got up from a scanner at the hospital (nothing serious, a routine check-up) and within the space of a few hours I was rendered immobile. Not good, as by the time my lower back had frozen in an agonising spasm I was in London.
I promise you that the return journey, on a train that seemed to lurch from side to side far more than it normally would, was excruciating. The subsequent cab ride home was worse and I cursed loudly as we jolted over every single speed bump.

I struggled down the steps to my flat, lowered myself onto my bed and tried to sleep.  It was a fitful night and by 5am the following morning I was wide awake and stuck. It’s at moments like this that the bliss of living alone is shattered. I eventually managed to roll off the bed and crawl to a hard back chair.
From there I managed to get up and start my search for help. Fortunately I remembered that a friend had recommended an osteopath in Kemp Town just a few weeks back. I waited until 8am then texted him with a cry for help.
Fortunately for me the phone was answered and the osteopath was able to see me at noon. Four hours away but at least he had a slot for me. I spent the next three and a half hours struggling to wash and dress, not an easy task I can tell you. I had never considered how complex the putting on of a sock is until I had to try and do it without being able to bend at the waist.
A good friend drove me over and within a few minutes I was in his office explaining what I had done in the hope that he could help.
This was not my first visit to an osteopath, I have used their services before and have always been very impressed. Firstly impressed by the depth of questioning that he went to about my general well-being, then by his careful and slow examination. There was no ploughing in here and for that I was more than grateful, at that point the idea of anyone doing anything physical was filling me with horror. Oh I know that visiting an osteopath and at the same time hoping that there would be no physical contact was a pretty daft idea but I promise you, by this point I was hardly thinking rationally.

He ran through a series of tests, gentle as can be, and then sat me back down to discuss options. Options were very welcome but quite frankly I would have let him run electric currents through my head if he had told me that it would take away the pain.
His chosen path was acupuncture. Now I am no stranger to acupuncture although the type I had experienced was classic traditional style involving cones of a herb that is place on your skin and set alight before a needle is inserted and immediately removed.
Modern acupuncture omits the herbs but the needles are left in for a longer period. The needles do not hurt, really they do not, although I would happily have let him use meat skewers if he had said that it was necessary. It sounds like I am drifting off into some weird S&M revery, and given the number of pain killers I have indulged in that would be entirely possible – well not really, pain is so not my kind of thing. Someone once asked me to tie them up and I said no, I did not have anything to do it with even if I had wanted to. They pointed to my collection of beautiful silk ties at which point I threw them out. Well a man has standards to maintain does he not?
As usual I digress. I agreed to the acupuncture and gingerly lowered myself onto his couch and assumed a position on my side with one knee up. It was the most comfortable I had been for a good 20 hours.

I could hear him washing and sanitising his hands and then ever so gently he inserted the needles, explaining things as he did. All I felt was a gentle tap and with some a slight prick, with some no prick at all.
There I rested, the calmest I had been for some time. I have no idea how long for either, simply zoned out and prayed that the needles would do the trick.
A while later he removed them, again I felt nothing, and on his instruction I sat on the edge of the couch. It was far easier than lying down had been, which I took as a good sign.
He then went through a series of exercises that I was to do on my return home and over the next few days. I feared that they would be agony but they were okay, not without some discomfort but definitely possible. He also suggested that I stayed mobile and did not allow it to freeze up again.
I paid, made a second appointment for the following week and left, walking a few hundred yards, which an hour later would have been impossible, before calling my friend for help and a lift home. By this point it was about 1.30pm and I was able to make a sandwich, the first food of the day, yes, me not eating for that long has to be some kind of proof of the extent of pain I was suffering.
Today I have managed o get out of bed and into the shower, quite a feat I can tell you, and although I have managed to dress I failed to get socks on, so right now I look like one of those French men that favour that no sock and loafer look that I find rather odd – and given that spring is late going out so cold. Still, I am at my desk with a hot water bottle behind me and a screen slightly blurred by the pain killers.

I cannot thank enough the osteopath Mark Andrews at the Kemptown Osteopathic Clinic, who took me out of agony to bearable discomfort in such a short space of time, and I feel confident that my second visit will prove equally satisfactory. If you see me about please refrain from slapping me on the back or any other physical expressions of greeting.
Kemptown Osteopathic Clinic, 34 Chesham Road, Brighton BN2 1NB 01273 600023
brightonosteopathy.co.uk