Scoliosis, Bowen & Frustrations
I finally managed to get down and see my therapist on Tuesday after I slipped in the street, we were doing the coccyx move and that is a 2 weekly affair, one side is done on 1 week and then the following week she will carry out the move on the opposite side, unfortunately for me I could not get to her the following week so she had to wait until I could get there, she did the other side anyway to see what would happen - so far so good.
I am still very stiff and in pain but it is not as bad as it was before, I am slowly repairing myself, trouble is I have a long car journey ahead of me next week as we are going to Murcia on holiday next Tuesday, car journeys are never good for me at the best of times but when I am suffering like this the journey will be a struggle, it also seems that our villa is up a hill so I don't expect I am going to enjoy walking up and down that hill everyday, hopefully it looks worse online than it actually is.
At least I am now able to stand and walk better than the previous few weeks, I was struggling to even stand for 5 minutes last week without bad pain from my right hip muscle, if I stressed it out too much I would go into spasm, and I wouldn't say that standing or walking was stressing me out but my back had other things to say!
I am not a depressive person and I tend to take my Scoliosis issues in my stride, however, the past few weeks have really been getting me down, I get annoyed and pissed off that I cannot even just walk round the shops without having to sit down all the time, walking round the shops trying on clothes with my walking stick is never a fun affair, I can't carry everything and the stick gets in the way but if I don't use it I don't have anything to give me support but without that I cannot carry everything without being worn out and then it becomes a chore rather than fun!
To be perfectly honest I just want to be normal and put one foot in front of the other without being in pain, I am FED up with moaning about the pain, FED up with not being able to be as fit as I would like, FED up with the rib hump pain and the sharp shooting electricity pangs that I get and just generally pissed off with the whole Scoliosis thing!
FED up with moaning to the people around me who love and care for me, they don't know what to say or do to comfort me, they know they can' take it away. Trouble with me is I have huge amounts of OverCompensation Syndrome going on where I think I have to be the only person in the World with Harrington rods and chronic pain and climb Mount Everest!!
"I can get through the pain"
I should know by now I am not SuperWoman and when my back is telling me to give it a rest I should do just that, but I don't, I continue with my life, running here, there and everywhere and then I wonder why it hurts.
What is Scoliosis OverCompensation Syndrome?
In order to understand the entire psyche of the Scoliosis patient, an examination of the culture surrounding this disfiguring condition as it has developed through time is in order. Historically, societal intolerance for people with the curved spines of Scoliosis has created a psychological outlook inexplicitly bound up primarily with the condition's deforming aspects--while neglecting the serious internal health problems crooked spines produce that can even be fatal.
Literature and film abound with examples of the reviling nature of the upper back "hump" and the distorted bodies and walking gaits that curved spines produce. Everyone is familiar with some version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" with its titled Scoliosis victim pilloried and otherwise vilified as describably the ugliest creature that ever lived. Even more realistic films such as the critically-acclaimed "Europa, Europa" has a striking scene with a crooked lonely woman galumphing hideously after the only person to befriend her--a young Jewish outcast in World War II Poland--when he is rounded up. Then there is the small hero in "The Secret Garden" who fearfully took to bed as a cripple just in dread of the thought that he might develop a scoliosis hump like his father's.
While modern society has made great strides in separating frightful-looking medical conditions like Scoliosis from evil spirits, religious condemnation, and the like, it will never entirely be able to discard its prejudices in the face of seeing crooked bodies that cannot move normally. The unfortunate fact is that until Scoliosis can be effectively prevented and/or treated in a relatively unobtrusive and more successful way, judgmental behaviors will remain. This is particularly true because the great majority of cases of curved spines are attributed to Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (I was diagnosed with AIS), making the cause of 80-85% of the cases unknown. With nearly 10% of the teenage population found to have at least small degrees of Scoliosis, and most high schools of any size having at least one if not more students with severe curvatures needing extensive surgery, the threat of Scoliosis becomes real and unpredictable to others.
Some people in the general population can only handle such fear for themselves and/or their children with avoidance of the victims of Scoliosis, granting them only pariah status. It is difficult enough for Scoliosis victims to have to fight societal ignorance throughout all stages of life, but worse is the fact that they are usually discovered to have shockingly distorted bodies right on the cusp of adolescence, a stage of life already fraught with identity crises and insecurities. Particularly because of the fragility of time in their lives when most Scoliosis patients are first diagnosed, they can develop unhelpful, defensive coping strategies that become a part of their permanent behaviors. These aberrant behaviors have been defined as Scoliosis Overcompensation Syndrome.
Scoliosis Overcompensation Syndrome (SOS) is often seen most severely in Adult Scoliosis Patients who had spinal fusions for Scoliosis as adolescents, particularly in the early years (1960s and 1970s) when the emotional consequences of such a deforming condition and its treatment was not deemed important to recovery. It is caused primarily by a strength-from-adversity outlook on life, developed as a result of patients having to face what are now recognised as barbaric Scoliosis treatments such as weeks at a time in halo-femural traction preceding surgery. (In halo-femoral traction, the bed-bound patient had his or her back stretched with ever-increasing traction weights connected to screws that were inserted in the knees and skull.)
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