I have long been interested in problem backs. In my childhood I recall my mother suffering from crippling migraine headaches and trying all sorts of cures. She saw a myriad different people who changed her diet and gave her drastic medicaments, but nothing made her better. Eventually she took herself off to an osteopath who manipulated her neck and fixed her in two visits! Even as a schoolgirl I remember being struck by this and astonished that the medical profession, so revered by us all, could have been so inept.

Much as I was impressed by the osteopaths, I didn't want to be one of them. I preferred the safer, respectability of 'medicine'. Some of the claims made by osteopaths sat badly with me and I opted for the more evidence-based - though no less gratifying - mission of dealing with back problems through conventional diagnostics and also using my hands.

I started my learning odyssey in London in my early twenties. There were many places offering work, because all the teaching hospitals were crying out for staff, so it was easy to immerse myself in the sea of suffering patients and modestly do my best; the book open at the right page. Quite quickly I acquired a reputation fordealing with backs in the Harley Street area of London. At at the age of twenty-six I was known as the baby of the street.

There were few physios in London working solely on backs and before long the place was bursting at the seams, running nearly twelve hours a day and sometimes with cars double and treble parked outside. In those days I think I perhaps I wasn't doing especially clever work, so much as tinkering with my hands and listening. But at least I had time and I was doing something ‘hands on’; using human touch to probe about in the spinal links. A far better option, even then, than seeing people acquiescing to ‘living with their pain’, taking pills, lying down or worse still, at a day's notice submitting like lambs to slaughter to the surgical table.

Early on it seemed to me the notion of a 'slipped disc’ was a furphy. Almost every patient referred to me came with the provisional diagnosis of PID (prolapsed intervertebral disc) and I couldn't understand how this could be so, especially if they responded well to my fairly artless tinkering. (A true slipped disc is impossible to fix with the hands.) The broad body of medicine remained obdurate, both the diagnostic world of radiology and the clinicians themselves. Everybody kept talking about disc prolapse and removing them willy nilly, and for years I simply carried my confusion around with me, fixing backs as I could and not talking much about what I was doing.

Over the years, I have moved further and further away from the narrow view of what goes wrong with spines. I became mistrustful of the readily expressed view ‘if you can’t see it there’s nothing wrong’. But rather than engage with the medical community [perhaps a mistake] I wrote my first book ‘Back in Action’ in 1986. I shut my ears to deafening clamour of dissent and wrote it as answers to commonly asked questions. My patients gave me the confidence to keep going and I directed my energies to them, rather than fellow practitioners. Not least amongst my supporters were members of the British royal family who were well known to look wider than the conservative view of health and ministering. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in particular urged me to continue.

My more recent book ‘The Back Sufferers’ Bible’ (published 2000) is a working hypothesis of the way spines break down, and the ways to intervene - both therapist and patient - in the recovery process. Even though this book too is written to patients, I have hoped it would stir the pot and open up debate. To a degree it has but of course, with any comfortably established and respected discipline, this is easier said than done. Medicine takes great pride (and rightly so) in being thoughtful; an evidence-based science-in-application.

But modern medicine is still not doing well with backs and I believe its increasingly narrow focus leaves too many people out in the cold - and in pain. Obviously, clinical intervention must operate from a sound research base, but I believe there's also a need for greater acceptance of a less definable, more intuitive approach. Medicine and cleverness yes, but also the laying on of hands and the application of techniques that work well in practice, though perhaps we don’t always know how or why. In effect I am after the elusive ideal; the best of both worlds; the best of ‘old’ and the best of the ‘new’.

Late in the day, you might say, I decided to become more pro-active in speaking to my fellow therapist colleagues and primary care doctors. In June 2003 in the UK I commenced my ‘Masterclasses: The 5 Stages of Spinal Breakdown’ and the first accredited course in Australia took place in August 2004. Today the courses run over four Stages several times a year in both places. The theory of the course is drawn from a sound evidence base, the reading list of which is made available to all delegates [see Masterclasses of this website]. 

Sarah Key (Feb 2009)

This is Sarah’s other life:

www.wooltrack.com
[Insert ‘Find code’ on the sheep’s back: 31555881;151004684]

My husband Russell and I are ‘city graziers’ in the Upper Hunter valley in New South Wales, where we raise angus cattle and fine wool merinos.

Recently we have been contacted by the Giovanni Schneider/Australian Wool Network, who buy our wool for the main fashion houses of Italy [Armani, Laura Piana, Benetton, Zegna, Hugo Boss] to participate in a Traceability Study. This will allow buyers of beautiful fine wool garments made in Europe to see where their product came from.

 You too can go on to the site and see what we’re doing.