Thursday, February 24, 2011

Nearly Ready.........

5 days to go before I leave for India and I'm almost prepared. I picked up my visa this morning and was unpleasantly shocked by the price of one single tourist visit to India - €120! Had to just bite the bullet as what could I do about it? A good whinge on Facebook but nothing else.

I picked up another CD full of X-Rays from the hospital on Monday. I must admit I am becoming slightly obsessed with looking through the images. I have focused so much on the degeneration of my discs that I had momentarily forgotten about all the other things wrong with my hapless spine.

The picture here on the left shows the scoliosis in my spine. It is by no means severe, in fact on it's own, it would probably cause me no problems at all. The radiologist report says "Scoliosis convex to the right with obvious disc disease level L3-L4 disc with discogenic narrowing and sclerosis of surrounding vertebral bodies. No vertebral collapse"

The X-Ray on the right shows, according to the report, "Extreme L4-L5 disc disease. Elapsed lumbar lordosis. In flexion and extension, there is
no local mobility."

It is fairly incredible that so-called medical specialists are always labelling my narrowed disc differently, I do have an extra vertebrae in my spine (not a particularly rare occurrence) which obviously causes the confusion, some count down from the ribs and some count up from the sacrum. I wonder if this mix-up has sometimes lead to me having injections in the wrong part of my spine.........

All my scans and X-Rays are 4 years old so it's probable that things, one way or another, have got worse, the pain certainly has. Anyway, medical lesson over for the day.

It's incredible the amount of stuff I need to take. Usually when going away, things like shower gel, shampoo and moisturiser are provided by even mediocre hotels but not where I'm going so I have to take the whole caboodle, 5 weeks worth and it weighs a tonne. The heavy price to keep clean and smell sweet. Hmmmmmm.....at least I won't need to take my boots, coat nor many warm clothes.

The reality of what I have signed up for is beginning to hit me. This is not a 5 week holiday going from one exciting place to another with friends or watching cricket, it's a 4 week voluntary sentence of healthy being, away from everyone I know (apart from Soren for the first 6 days) and away from all my comfort zones, well one really - Mulligans. I'll miss the craic, the Guinness, the music and one particular barman. I'm sure there will be much merriment at the bar over the next few weeks imagining me drinking my herbal tea, eating my rabbit food curries and striking Yoga poses imitating trees. I really hope I won't regret this.












Friday, February 18, 2011

Ayurvedic Yoga Villa

One of my jobs is tutoring a lovely, Indian girl, now teenager, called Anisha. Her Mum, Sadhna cooks delicious, vegetarian, Indian food and I sometimes cheekily hang around for dinner after my teaching sessions. As a big fan of India, especially their cuisine and of cricket, we have a lot to talk about. One evening, a few weeks ago, we were talking about the resorts in Kerala where you can get all kinds of treatments for ailments and conditions while being in a calming and healthy atmosphere. I was all ears. This kind of place sounded divine.

Literally 2 days later, I was walking past Palm Guitars, a fabulous, chaotic musical instrument shop 2 doors from my apartment. Soren, the owner was sitting outside, stringing some weird instrument with his usual cup of coffee in hand and cigarette not far away. He said he was busy sorting out stuff as he would be away for a month, in India, in Kerala, at a place called Ayurvedic Yoga Villa. A bit of a coincidence or what! I'm sure Soren won't mind me telling everyone that he wanted to go to sort out his high blood pressure, his aching back, lose some weight and have a bit of a detox, along with giving up the wicked cigarettes. Soren doesn't have much faith in the Dutch Health system either and thinks there must be an alternative to popping pills for the rest of his life. It all sounded so familiar so I immediatley took the details of this place and excitedly started my research.

Click to go to Ayurvedic Yoga Villa's website




I'm not going to bore anyone senseless with the ins and outs of what Ayurdvedic treatment actually alludes to. There's a search engine called Google for that. In short, Ayurvedic is all about balancing body and mind by adopting the right diet, yoga, meditation, herbal medication and massage along with cleansing, rejuvination and detoxification of both body and mind. Anyone who knows me well will be thinking this is the kind of mumbo jumbo that I would normally dismiss in a flash and get back to my pint of Guinness. However, something has changed in my tiny mind, I'm not sure how or when, it's probably a combination of shear frustration of the medical world and having a lot of time on my hands to let the mind wander to new places.

I got in touch with Ayurdvedic Yoga Villa and my first impression of their service was very good, I chatted to them on Skype and received emails from one of their 3 resident doctors. They thought they could help my pain problems and with my new laissez-faire attitude, (frankly, if their treatment doesn't work then at least I have tried and no doubt will enjoy the few weeks in the sunshine in the process) I signed up for 28 days.


Dinner. You can take that banana away though, they are evil

This will be 28 days of, wait for this folks......

No booze. Guinness can cut down their production for a few weeks.
No meat, fish, eggs or junk food. This will be easy for me in India, where I am always vegetarian anyway.
No Diet Coke.....aahhhhhhhh! This could be tough.
No TV. I don't like one day cricket so couldn't care less that I'll miss the Wendy Cricket World Cup.
Very limited internet use. Max 30 mins per person per day.
Getting up at 6 o'clock every morning for yoga. 06.00, what does the 0 stand for? Oh my God it's early!
Other things banned that don't apply to me like as I don't indulge anyway like no smoking and no coffee.
The worst thing is there'll be no Barry, my wonderful boyfriend.

If everything else fails, at least I'll get a thorough detox and a suntan.

It's now 11 days before I go and I am feeling anxious, excited, full of hope and errrrr....cold.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Background Stuff

How I have ended up booking this potential life changing trip to Southern India is a long story but I suppose it is relevant to try and understand a little bit about the history of my back pain and how I came about this decision to go......alternative.


The crutches have become a regular part of my life

I remember the first time I experienced acute pain in my back. It was in 1979 when I was at a  gymnastics training clinic in York. I was 9 years old at the time and it happened when I was jumping onto a springboard, hoping to complete a perfect long-arm vault. After feeling that stabbing sensation in my lower spine, I didn't quite go face first into said horse but I certainly pulled up. It might have been fairly comical to an onlooker but to me, it was the start of a nightmare.

Gymnasts are always feeling pain, it comes with the sport - endless strained joints, bruises, landing on your head and then there's the hours and hours of training and strengthening. I knew this was something a bit different but communicating what had happened to the coaches wasn't that easy. Gymnasts are a hard breed and admitting to pain is a weakness and certainly was not encouraged back then.

Looking back at that day, I remember trying to ignore the pain because the trampoline was up in the next rotation at the training camp. We didn't have a trampoline at the gym back in Saltaire and I absolutely loved it so I sat out the rest of the vault round "like a sissy" hoping I would be fine to bounce up and down, somersaulting and twisting on the trampoline. Alas not, I just broke down again. I was gutted, tears of frustration just as much as tears of pain.

Beth Tweddle I most definitely wasn't!
Nothing much  has changed really only I don't make a habit of vaulting horses or somersaulting from the top of human towers anymore, it's still pain and frustration.

My life as a gymnast ended in 1982. I had a good bash at some other sports - I could play tennis OK and I had a great grounding to be a good springboard and platform diver but persistant pain put an end to my sporting endeavours before I was 20 years old.




I can't count the number of medical "specialists" I have seen or been referred to, it's just a lot: Physios, chiropractors, orthopaedic surgeons, neurologists, pain specialists and even a podiatrist. Of all of them, I can safely say that just 2 made a positive difference and one of those - accidently. 2 made things a whole lot worse, administering epidurals that went wrong resulting in weeks of spinal headaches. Ouch! I also take a little comfort in that all the orthopods have advised against any intrusive surgery. The official term for my condition is "degenerative disc disease" but in my case, at least one was shot by the time I was 9 and has now completely disappeared with the vertebrae above and below far too close together, practically kissing, and the adjacent one has an outline but has no substance, a bit like using a half deflated balloon as a shock absorber.

MRI scan from 2007

I had a good pain specialist in Dr. James Foster at The Princess Grace Hospital in London. However I moved from London to Amsterdam in 2003 and despite paying EUR 133 every month for compulsory health insurance here in Holland, Dr. Foster's treatment is not covered and the medics here refuse to replicate his treatment. I used to get 4 facet joint injections combined with a caudal epidural maybe once every 6 months with Dr. Foster. Sometimes, the injections worked better than others but those that worked well gave me a new lease of life for a few weeks. I was told that in time, they could stop working altogether. I wouldn't know, it's 5 years since I last paid to have the injections.....I'm still trying to get to see a proper specialist here in Holland.

MRI scan from 2007


The mental side has been just as tough sometimes as the physical side. Not everyone in my life has been 100% supportive. It's impossile to explain how some days are better than others but you have no idea why. In the words of my songwriter friend, Mark Gilligan, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, "Some days are good, some days are bad and some days don't happen at all". I have been accused, in the past, of "putting it on" or "seeking attention" and that's fairly tough to take. The accusations rarely occurs here in Amsterdam, my friends take me as I am and I come with back pain, it's that simple. They can tell if I'm having a good day or a bad day. No one sees those days that don't happen at all - just me, my bed and my tramadol.

It's tough in the freezing winter, the pain gets worse, a lot worse. I presume the cold and damp affects the inflamation of my joints which affects the ability to bear my own weight. Crutches help redistribute the weight through my arms and shoulders so I use them now as required. The last 2 winters have been hellish and after spending 11 days in the relative warmth of the UAE  in January - a kind of self-prescribed heat treatment, my mind changed tack.