An Important Lesson From A Nice Back Pain Win...

An important lesson taken from a nice win

An important part of what we discuss with each one of our clients when we first talk to them is ‘what they want out of care’. Whether that be a specific goal like ‘run 10km’ or get back to the gym 4 time per week, or more generalised things like ‘be able to take walks with the wife without having to sit down every 10 minutes’ each one matters, and we make sure to keep up to date with how they are going as care goes on. 

 

We often hear different paths of progression. Sometimes it takes a good 8-12 months for goals to start being realised and sometimes it takes weeks. Both are great to hear about and no one goal should be celebrated more than another. Obviously, time to realise the goal is often dictated by what the actual goal is, but they are all just as important as each other. 

 

Last week I had one very interesting and fantastic goal achievement from one of my clients in Stoke. 

 

This client, let’s call him James, came to see me one month ago with crippling back pain shooting all the way down his leg to hit foot. He’s 68 years old so naturally he’d been told by previous healthcare practitioners (I won’t name names, but they’re a rather large employer in the UK) that it was sciatica as a result of arthritis so there’s nothing to be done about it, just take some pain meds. This wasn’t helping though, and pretty much everything James does on a day to day basis was impacted. His goals weren’t to run a 10k or go on a long walk, but rather just to get an unbroken night's sleep, walk anywhere above 100 meters, even sit down for more than 20 minutes. Literally everything simple in his life was a struggle. 

 

Fast forward 4 weeks and James is now walking upright, comes straight through the clinic doors and has that happy ‘bounce’ of someone walking without constraint. He and his wife tell me that he’s been feeling great this past week and has had next to no issues with his back or his leg. We exchange a few happy comments about how nice it must be to sleep and sit without issues anymore while I adjust him and then I let him go, reminding him of his next appointment time with me next week.

 

…wait what?

 

Next appointment? But he’s feeling better, he’s achieved his goals…

 

Yep! 

 

James hasn’t finished his care plan yet, he’d only seen us 7 times. Have a guess at how many more appointments we’ve recommended him..

 

28 more, at a minimum! 

 

We recommended James a plan of action based not on how he feels day to day, week to week, but how he was testing when he came to see us. It’s easy to forget how bad things were a month ago when everything’s fine and dandy right now. How often do you breathe through your nose and think ‘thank god i don’t have that cold still like I did last month’? 

 

We recommended James his care plan based on multiple factors, but mainly his testing. How his body functioned, how engaged his musculature was and how well his joints are able to move. We then did a particular and specific set of tests to see how well his nervous system is working, testing how his patterns and habits look and why they might have led him to the position he is in in the first place. In fact, the thing that probably meant the LEAST to us when we recommended James his plan was his pain levels. So it only makes sense that we continue to have the same level of concern for James’s pain now, right? Would not influence us on what we need to recommend. e take it at face value. It sucks that he has it, for sure. It’s great that he now doesn’t… But it does not and sh

 

One main reason for this is that pain is purely subjective. Hypothetically, James' pain of 10/10 might only be a 6/10 for Sue, 2/10 for Phil and 35/10 for Nick, all for the same thing! Am I supposed to now recommend them different care plans to fix the same issue just because they report it differently? Obviously not. So we need another, better measure right?

 

The main thing we use for that is his neurological function. There’s plenty of blogs going in to why we do this but at a basic level, your nervous system controls all. It tells our body what to do and when to do it every day of our lives. When we challenge it, we get to see what patterns, habits and imbalances are going on and we aim to rectify them. Only when these ‘bad habits’ have gone on long enough does the body let us know about them through symptoms. So if the symptoms ease I know there’s still lots to do because the likelihood is James’s nervous system still needs help relearning this new way of working. If I were just to help the symptoms and then kick James out of our clinic and say ‘good look mate, come back if there’s any more problems’, how bad of a clinician am I?

So yes, damn straight I’m seeing James for the next 3 months and you best believe I’m drilling this new way of functioning in to his nervous system consistently throughout that time. And when it gets there, I’m going to help him keep it that way too. He’s got far too much to do with his life than to just wrap himself in bubble wrap and never stress his system again.