Getting Back to Work
My doctor was key in my being able to persist in congregational ministry. On one visit, he had a medical student observing, and asked the student what he thought about my back. "I can see the deformity," the kid said. My doctor smiled apologetically in my direction, and then suggested that patients would probably respond better if the student said something like, "I can see some scoliosis."
I didn't know I had scoliosis, and I'm not sure I really knew what it was, but I certainly knew my back periodically locked up. On the worst occasion Wendy and the kids dragged me the length of the Whyalla manse, draped over a large toy semi-trailer an uncle had built for one of them. On that occasion, I wondered if I might die because the pain was so severe I had trouble breathing.
Five years ago, we shifted house. Far from my usual physio, I booked into the nearest one I could find. There, I met a deceptively diminutive physiotherapist named Victoria. She looked at my back: "Ah! The scoliosis!" Immediately I was bent and twisted and barraged with questions, then, "This is what we will do. Lie here. On your side. Closer to the edge..."
And she set about a set of twisting and stretching manoeuvres unlike anything I had ever experienced. This was not, as they say, a process for the faint hearted. Constantly checking pain levels, she nonetheless pushed me (literally) to the limits of what I could bear.
I've not met a physio I didn't like, and am deeply grateful for a group of people who have helped me through serious and debilitating pain. But here, I am in the hands of an absolute expert. After our first sessions, I not only had the pain removed from my lower back, but found that a mostly dead area in my left neck and shoulder was freed up and that I could feel what for years had been a six inch strip of numb skin. I also went home and took Panadol, followed by Nurofen at tea.
A couple of years later, the scoliosis caught up with me. I went back for more work. After a couple of sessions, Victoria sat me upright, got me to put my hands behind my head—careful adjustment there—and then slipped her arms through my own. I had just enough time to recall from childhood rough-housing that this was a "Full Nelson," before she lifted me bodily off the bench! When I had my breath back said. "I guess you don't feel much need to go to the gym." She smiled and said, "No. Not really."
Andrea Prior (June 2025)
(Victoria is a pseudonym)
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