The Scottish Rock where it all began to go wrong….
Just over two years ago, as I was walking down from the top of Neist Point on the glorious Isle of Skye, I stepped on an exposed stone slab, slipped, and fell, landing on its edge with the small of my back.
I lay on the ground for several seconds in a daze. It wasn’t until I tried to get up that I realised I had done more than knock the wind out of me, for my legs weren’t prepared to cooperate.
My first thought was to reach for my phone, but I had no signal. Nor was there anyone within hailing range, for I had chosen a wet and magnificently blustery day to go cliff walking.
As I lay in the grass, still not feeling pain, I was beginning to imagine the worst when sensation flooded back as legs tingling, my angry, abused back vented its frustrations.
With great effort, and much pain, I managed to get to my feet and hobbled back towards the car, each step sending knives of pain lancing through my lower back. By the time I lowered myself into the passenger seat, I was sweating profusely but thankfully, sitting down wasn’t uncomfortable.
I reasoned that this was a good sign, for if I had broken anything, I wouldn’t have been able to place any pressure on my lower back at all. And so stubbornly, I decided against visiting the A&E ward, and opted instead for an early night with a fistful of painkillers.
Somehow, I slept, although I was not able to move easily once I had lain down. The next morning, I could see that a nasty bruise was already beginning to wrap around my waist. Over the course of the next four weeks, I watched the bruise blossom and spread, at first an angry purple, then a symphony of autumnal yellows and late summer greens. It would eventually form a belt almost the entire way around my waist, in places a good 14 centimetres wide. I walked slowly, and crawled up stairs. When I forgot to take painkillers, movement of any kind was excruciating, but as I could still move, albeit at the pace of an 80 year-old, I toughed it out.
By the time I moved to Spain a few weeks later, I had convinced myself that I’d had a close call, nothing more.
It wasn’t until February 2019, a full year later, that I began to feel the after effects of the fall. Lying on my back one morning, about to start a 30-day Yoga challenge, I realised that there was a bump on the right side of my lower back, where spine and slab had met. I’d not noticed it before, and it didn’t hurt, but lying on a hard, flat surface, I could feel it, and the slight lift it gave to my right hip.
In April, I began to notice my hip made a clicking sound, and hurt slightly after a long day on my feet. Perhaps because I hadn’t registered for reciprocal treatment before moving to Spain, perhaps because I was almost broke, or perhaps because I am part mule, I still didn’t consult a doctor. Instead, I began to go to the gym, in the hope that more movement would somehow fix the problem.
Oddly enough, it did. Or so I thought. It also did wonders for my waistline (gains now slowly being lost to the onslaught of fabulous Chinese food and the fact that gyms here are still Covid-closed). While I still experienced occasional tenderness and was sometimes left limping slightly if I walked more than 20 kilometres at a time - and as an inveterate roamer, that happened more often than might be expected - as I always felt fine in the morning, I gave my troublesome hip no further thought.
Then one morning in late January this year, I woke up with what felt like a trapped nerve. More uncomfortable than painful, it happened the morning I was due to travel to London to sort out some China-related formalities. The first two days weren’t too bad, I was definitely in pain by the end of the day, but by the third morning, the day of my return, I was also limping badly.
Back in Southport, I had only just registered with a local GP, and still hadn’t had my initial check-up, which had been postponed twice by the clinic at the last minute. I had a new appointment for the first week of February and so I loaded up on Panadol Night, as a new development, a dull pain in my hip and leg, was waking me up every night, and waited.
The day of the appointment, I casually mentioned my woes but after poking around a bit, the doctor who examined me said the lump was in my imagination, and that my intermittent pains, which were most pronounced at night, were probably a sign of age. I was told that light exercise would help - as indeed it had seemed to be doing - but that otherwise, I’d just have to learn to live with the night pains.
Stubborn I may be but I wasn’t about to accept that I’d ‘just’ have to live with the sleeplessness and other limitations those pains were increasingly imposing on me. My plan is to live to at least 132 – I want to experience an entire century - and the thought of living the next 70-odd years in various degrees of discomfort, less and less able to roam freely, didn’t appeal.
I found a specialist in Liverpool, but once I had persuaded my GP to make the necessary referral, I discovered that the earliest appointment was in April, by which time I would be China.
So I decided that as soon as possible, I would get myself treated in Beijing. But then after I finally got here on March 16th, there was two weeks of quarantine, another three weeks when I couldn’t get into the office to pick up my medical insurance, and then a further week before I was paid, and could afford to see a doctor. Which brings us to the beginning of May
In the meantime, my hip had taken a turn for the worse. It now hurt to walk, and I had developed a constant rolling lurch, as I was unable to place my full weight on my right leg. Obviously, this was creating new strains – and pains – in my shin, left leg and back. I was falling apart.
That’s when I heard of Dr. Lan. A practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, he runs a rather recherché clinic in north-central Beijing and was, I was told at a party I attended a few weeks ago, “an absolute miracle worker, darling.”
I’ve only had two experiences of TCM before, once to treat (very successfully) breathing problems caused by a mite infestation in the tatami mats of the lovely home I was renting in Takasaki, and the second time in Seville, when I thought it might help with the incipient pains in my hip, but it didn’t.
In both cases, acupuncture and moxibustion were involved. But as my issue was most likely musculo-skeletal, something more hands-on was probably necessary.
“Tui na,” my informant told me. “It’s massage, only painful. Excruciating. It verges on torture and leaves bruises. But really sorts these problems out. Anyway, they do all kinds of things at the clinic. Leave it to Lan, he’ll know what you need. Oh, and his English is good, too, so you won’t have to worry about communicating.”
Four days later, after an examination in which Dr. Lan, a rather avuncular figure with a brisk but jolly manner, manipulated joints and limbs, prodded for pains and drew imaginary lines across my lower anatomy - whether linking Qi points, or muscle attachments, I’m not sure - I found out. My path was to be Pain.
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
Handing me over to a slight, smiling woman, I foolishly assumed that I was being spared the attentions of the rather more muscular-looking practitioner who had followed the good doctor into the room. What I hadn’t counted on was my masseuse being a ninja with hands of steel. So while my leg was only ever gently coaxed to take positions with which it has become unfamiliar in recent years, the accompanying pressure on muscles, nerve clusters and assorted anatomical features brought tears to my eyes.
“Ready you,” she said, smiling as she surveyed the tortured remains of my carcass on the massage table, “doctor coming.”
Reader, have two more ominous words ever been uttered in the English language? I think not. On a par with “transfer pending” and “die, motherfucker”, the doctor introduced me to a level of pain that not only left me teary-eyed, but gasping, as recalcitrant muscles were forced to submit and joints were skilfully manipulated back into their proper place. I was, you see, out of alignment.
“Yes,” Dr. Lan had said in the initial, pre-massage assessment, “you had accident here, yes?” He pointed to my right knee, which I had damaged in a childhood bicycle accident involving a Chopper, a steep hill, an abrupt right-turn and a rice field (this was in Taiwan).
I nodded mutely.
“Yes. Classic problem. Knee joint little twisted, not align. Make tension here,” he prodded an hitherto unknown muscle on the right side of my groin, making me wince.
“This good side, relaxed,” he continued, prodding the same muscle on the left side. “Left hip also soft. You feel? This problem making many years. Then back accident. Now all bad.”
“But we can fix,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Soon better. Okay?”
I whimpered gratefully.
“Turn on side left, please. Sorry. Maybe this time pain. We go deep. But better.”
This time? Somehow I managed not to scream.
Tui na translates as “push, lift and squeeze” and is apparently based on Daoist principles. Much like acupuncture, it’s about manipulating the lifeforce, or Qi, by re-opening the body’s Eight Gates – essentially the joints – to allow the Qi to circulate unimpeded. This is achieved by flexing, lifting, twisting and bending, as fingers, hands, arms and elbows are used to apply strategic pressure to joints, meridian points, fascia and muscles.
If ninja lady’s hands had been made of steel, the doctor’s were made of diamond and while I had no doubt as his hands met my muscles that even the hardest knots would surrender, I did wonder if I’d be able to walk at all, afterwards.
And yet once the treatment stopped, I felt fine. My hip still hurt, though noticeably less, and the pains I’d been experiencing in my lower right leg were completely gone. My rolling lurch was also less pronounced.
After the second treatment a week later, the pain went away altogether for the first three days afterwards, until I foolishly decided to run to catch a train. And after today’s third session, in which there was a great deal of cracking and popping as assorted joints and bones in my hips, legs, and feet were coaxed firmly back into place, I am walking completely normally again. No lurch. No wincing. No tenderness. Well, apart from in my calves, which revealed hidden knots of pain during today’s exam, and were then mercilessly prodded, pummelled and squeezed until the muscles finally agreed to behave properly. In fact my session today was so intense, that at one point after my left leg had been worked on, I felt like it was two inches longer than my right.
I’m now permitted to walk short distances each day, more than 1km but less than 5, as the aim is to strengthen the muscles and joints, but not tire them. And then in a month or so, I will be encouraged to work them harder, go on hikes and climb hills, in order to ensure the new alignments are properly strengthened, and therefore take. And when tat happens, there will be no stopping me.
Look out China, here I come!
The characters for Tui Na.
They also translate as ‘10,000 Devils’.
No, I’m just kidding.
Or am I?