My Experience of Needing Medical Help

Today I want to share a personal story about a particular moment in my life where I was a patient under the care of various healthcare providers and in desperate need of help. This experience is one reason for my professional psychotherapeutic interest in the multifaceted complexities around medical trauma, medical boundary breaches and power dynamics. 

In the summer of 2024, after a very labour-intensive few months, I experienced acute low back pain. As a Pilates teacher who had worked many years alongside injury rehab, this didn’t worry me too much. I clearly had overdone it -maybe even developed a disc prolapse. I knew what to do to support healing and so over six weeks I did my best and remained patient. The acute back pain and inflammation went away but instead sciatica slowly began to flare. In late September I started having trouble lying on my back as the pressure on the nerve was too painful. Sitting also started to trigger nerve pain and so I went to see the doctor at the beginning of October. The doctor was friendly, recommended ibuprofen gel and referred me to a physiotherapist. 

The gel did not help at all and two weeks later I saw the NHS physio. He did some tests and then confidently told me that this had nothing to do with my back. He believed I had pulled something in my right hip joint. He gave me some exercises, and, looking at them, I told him that most of these exercises would be impossible for me to do or excruciatingly painful at the very least. He told me that yes, it would be very painful and that this was normal and to do them anyway. 

Looking back now, I knew then that this was absolutely terrible advice. Whatever the correct diagnosis was, I knew that you do not stretch and deliberately trigger an irritated nerve. I knew that no exercise should be excruciatingly painful. After all, I had told my own clients this for years. But I had gone to the physio because I needed help. I was vulnerable and having grown up learning that authority is to be obeyed, I was willing to believe that he knew better. I did the exercises every day and I screamed in pain as I did them. Of course the symptoms escalated. By the beginning of November I could no longer sit at all. I could only sleep on my left side and had to get up several times in the night to settle the pain back down. 

As I could no longer lie on my back, I couldn't even tolerate the starting position for many of the exercises I would normally suggest to clients with this kind of presentation. Everything I tried only triggered more pain. There was literally nothing that helped. I tried heat. I tried cooling. I tried resting and walking. I even consulted a nutritionist and went on an anti-inflammatory diet and took supplements. 

I returned to the doctor who never actually examined me. She kept giving me pain medication for muscular pain even though I kept telling her that my pain was purely neural. Eventually she prescribed Gabapentin, which is a pain medication used for nerve damage. I felt conflicted because I doubted the nerve was actually damaged as such. By this point I was fairly certain that it was a lumbar disc prolapse that was compressing the nerve. The Gabapentin also had no effect and when I told the doctor this she just told me to raise the dosage again and again. Still there was no difference to the pain and I was now on a significant dosage. 

I started seeing an osteopath who tried osteopathic treatments and acupuncture. Unfortunately most of the treatments did either nothing or irritated the nerve further. I kept going because frankly, it felt good to have someone nice and reassuring take care of me and my body. She would say “Of course you are going to get better,” and while I was seeing no evidence of that it meant a lot to hear a professional say this with conviction. 

In the meantime a lot of well-meaning colleagues and friends encouraged me to try acupuncture, yoga, meditation, NA touch and all sorts of modalities they swore by. It was all well-meaning but after some time it became quite frustrating. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate good advice but I had been experimenting so much by that point with absolutely nothing helping, that yet another “You should try X” just made me feel as though no one saw just how much I had tried already.

I was referred for an X-ray in early December, which showed very little. I told the doctor that by now I was unable to walk more than ten minutes or sleep for longer than two hours at a time and that none of the medications made any difference. His response was: “Well, let’s hope the medication starts helping soon.” 

At that point I gave up on NHS healthcare. I knew that if I indeed had a disc prolapse the x-ray would not show this. I could not comprehend why after five months of worsening severe pain I had not been offered an MRI scan yet. To me it felt like the doctors either never took me seriously to begin with, or at some point along the line simply decided the pain was only in my head (something that women over thirty with persistent pain often seem to be labelled with).

I was in the lucky position that my father was a retired GP in Germany, so he arranged for me to see a colleague and I packed my bags and headed there. The German GP instantly referred me for an MRI, which I had a few days later. The MRI finally delivered a clear diagnosis. As assumed, it was a rather large disc prolapse between L4-5, which was compressing the nerve root. The radiologist was stunned by the size of the prolapse, and the severity of my pain was no longer surprising to anyone.  They told me that a prolapse of this size would take around six months to heal. However, the prolapse was already five months old at that point, so I naturally wondered why it had not started healing yet? But of course I wanted to have hope. What other choice did I have?

They suggested three PRT injections over the course of six weeks. They told me these injections would provide long-term pain relief. I was glad to have a clear diagnosis and a new way forward, even though I was not hugely hopeful that this would work. 

Doctors kept telling me that disc prolapses heal by themselves and that this was just a matter of time. “You won’t be able to stop the healing,” one doctor joked. But inside me it felt as though my body simply did not register that this was something it could heal. And whenever someone tried to remind me of the amazing self-healing power of the body by saying: “The body is so amazing at healing itself.” I felt indirectly gaslit because this was not my experience at all right now. Such statements made me feel as though something was wrong with me, like I was somehow getting in the way of my body's healing.

By this point I was on four different painkillers just to get two hours’ sleep at night and the PRT injections also had no effect. While I was still hoping for them to help eventually I also went to see some kind of special physiotherapist that my cousin had recommended. This man had an incredible ego and spent most of the session telling me how brilliant and clever he was and how everyone else is stupid -this very clearly included me, in his opinion. Without looking at me he told me that my prolapse had nothing to do with the insane labour I had put my body through in August 2024. He told me the prolapse had come from my scoliosis. It was actually news to me that I had scoliosis. I was fairly confident that as a body worker and movement therapist I would have known if I did. So I told him that if he sees scoliosis now that is likely a result of me compensating for the past seven months. But he disagreed. He belittled me and told me I was of course wrong and the scoliosis had always been there and it was the cause for the prolapse and that I had made matters worse with all the exercise I had been doing in my life. He told me never to do any kind of exercise or sports again and that of course only he could fix this. I left incredibly irritated and unchanged. But a part of me started wondering if he was right. Had I always had scoliosis and no one had ever seen it? Had years of investing in my body through therapeutic movement actually caused this injury?

In February I returned to the UK in more pain than ever. I decided to simply hold on to what the radiologist had told me…. -That it would take six months for the prolapse to heal. I wanted to believe it because honestly, at that point I felt that I was slowly dying due to the lack of sleep. I was unable to walk or sleep and spent most of every night on my elbows and knees on the floor trying to get the pain under control. At times I would fall asleep like that, waking up confused with my face on the carpet. But in my body I felt the truth. Nothing was healing, the nerve was just getting more and more sensitive. I was screaming in pain a lot of the time and as my stomach started to get irritated from the painkillers I eventually gave up on those altogether. -They had barely helped anyway.  

Four months after the MRI I was done waiting for healing to happen and I returned to Germany once more for a new MRI that I knew would show no change. The radiologist was very concerned by the state I was in and told me that it was time to consider surgery. 

Apparently, I was not at all keen to have surgery initially. I actually have no memory of this myself now, but both my therapist and my partner have told me that I was really battling with the decision to go see a surgeon, even though I knew I could not go on like this. As a movement educator, I had attended plenty of training that taught me about the common spinal surgeries and that they should be avoided where possible. In the Pilates teaching world there definitely was and still is a prevailing belief that spinal surgery is a lazy option that will not last and that instead one can resolve or manage any spinal issue with the appropriate exercise.

But at this point I felt that surgery may be simply the last option I had. I was able to get a consultation with Prof. Dr. Greiner, the lead spinal surgeon at Marienhospital in Osnabrueck, Germany. When I met Prof. Greiner I instantly, and perhaps for the first time in this saga, felt really seen and taken seriously by a medical professional. He was horrified that I had been living more or less like this for seven months and could not understand why no one had suggested surgery earlier, given the severity of my symptoms and the fact that there had been no sign of healing during all this time. He explained that not all prolapses heal and that it was not my fault.

“You don’t have to live like this,” he kept saying. 

Within minutes the mystery about the scoliosis being the cause of everything also got cleared up as the surgeon assessed my spine and said: “I assume you don’t normally have scoliosis.” He told me that clearly my spine had started to deform from months of compensatory movement patterns and that this would probably correct itself after surgery.

He said that surgery had a very good chance of resolving the issue and he even apologised that the earliest appointment he could give me was two weeks away, as Easter was coming up. I remember laughing because waiting two weeks to finally get help felt like nothing at all after seven months of hell. 

So at the end of April 2025 I went into hospital. I was pretty scared of surgery and the anaesthesia left me feeling rough for several days. However, none of that mattered much because I woke up from surgery lying on my back and the pain was simply gone. That night, I slept through for the first time in many months. 

While the scoliosis indeed disappeared within a couple of months and I got my life back, recovery was a long process and I had to adapt to the fact that my spine was no longer the same. But this was something I felt equipped to work with, thanks to my knowledge, training and support system. 

There can be an implicit judgement in the complementary therapy world that surgeons tend to see you as a pile of meat rather than a person. In my experience the surgeon was one of very few medical professionals who did not judge me, did not dismiss me or indirectly blame me or my body for my situation, did not try to sell me something that would make me dependent on him, and ultimately was the person who made the horrendous pain stop. 

The point is not that all surgeons are angels, of course. The point is that when we need medical help we tend to be at our most vulnerable and unfortunately we are likely to experience judgement, dismissal, and even subtle coercion. In the end all medical professionals are just people and unconscious judgements, ignorance and power dynamics exist within all of us. We may be deterred from seeking the right help because of fear of an entire profession, doctors may judge women with chronic pain as hysterical, physiotherapists may think they know your body better than you do, well-meaning friends may insist you simply haven't tried the right treatment yet, and complementary health professionals may judge you for seeking surgery. 

I feel for all of you who battle with pain, physical limitations and other vulnerable conditions and who have to navigate egos, ignorance and know-it-alls in the healthcare system. Remember, in the end they are all just people. From my experience, the best person to trust is the person who is actually seeing you, listening to you and taking you seriously, because actually this is your body and while you may seek help, you also know an awful lot about yourself and what you are going through. 

I think of this every day I work with my clients. While I cannot stop everyone’s pain the way the surgeon stopped mine, I know how important all those people were who gave me strength, hope and reassurance, who stayed by my side in my suffering and most importantly, who reminded me to trust my inner knowing and to keep hold of my agency, because it was this connection to myself that made it a little easier for me to choose which professionals to actually trust with my health.

Medical support and intervention can be a true blessing, sometimes even life-saving, but it can also be a vulnerable and toxic minefield. We should not have to navigate it alone.