Phil & Ruth Murray- 54 & 44 years young!

Faversham

"I went to the Doctor. Subluxation was not even mentioned as a cause of my problem." - Phil Murray

PHILIP MURRAY (Delivery Driver of Rocking Horses) – Age 54

Born in 1952 in London, Victoria, it was 6 years since the Second World War had finished and the whole city was under a massive rebuilding programme.

Growing up in this environment gave all small boys one big playground to play in and there were still bomb sites all over London. Bombed out houses and vast open areas, walls, trees and scaffolding were waiting to be explored. You name it, if it looked like it could be climbed, it was! Fear was not an option nor was it thought about by us - that was left to the parents. Unfortunately, climbing has its downside, what goes up invariably comes down, with an almighty bump, and I can say that I did a lot of coming down, a lot faster than I ever went up!

Then came the day that you make a bike from parts found lying around. What fun it was learning to ride: got on fell off, got on fell off, then went a little further and again fell off – you get the drift. Until that day, when you can actually ride, you haven’t got a care in the world…until you need to brake. The brakes on the bikes in those days were very hit and miss, more of a miss really, especially in wet weather. That’s when, trying to stop, a large wall or lamp post came in handy to crash into.

What I am trying to say is that my spine took a lot of punishment and in those days. If you hadn’t broken anything, you didn’t go to the doctor, you just got an aspirin from your mother and a hot bath. I suppose that’s when subluxation first started to creep into my spine.

By the time I arrived into my teens I was into my school’s Army Cadet Force, rugby, ice skating, karate, squash and of course climbing – this time with ropes and under proper supervision. I still fell off, but more gracefully…

I left school and started work.

Again, more injuries to my spine. I went to the Doctor, “nothing serious, just bruised muscle”, nothing a few painkillers wouldn’t ‘cure’. Subluxation was not even mentioned as a cause of my problem. Over the next few years, more bumps and bashes to my spine, however the ‘backache’ started to last a lot longer and even more frequent visits to the Doctor didn’t help. He just increased the dosage of painkillers to patch things up.

I was starting to find it difficult to bend over without feeling a sharp twinge in my lower back and straightening up was slow and painful.

With two car crashes and whiplash behind me, in addition to my physical past, certain normal every day movements like bending over to pick something up had to be thought out before being attempted. It got to the point where my neck and lower back ached all the time and the only way to reduce or numb the pain was to take more painkillers. I was taking three to four 400mg tablets at a time. I felt there must be something else wrong with my spine and that I had to do something about it before other parts of my body started to feel the effects of all these pills I was taking.

Luckily I noticed in my local KM paper the advertisement for Dr. Farthing’s Ideal Spine Centre and that he used an x-ray machine to help him with diagnosing the patient’s problem – and the rest, as they say, is history.

Without seeing that advert and booking an appointment to see Dr. Farthing at his practice, I would not have known about the damage I had done to my spine over the years, how bad it had become and that it was possible to correct the cause.

 

RUTH MURRAY (Company Secretarial Officer) – Age 44

The first traumatic experience in my life was, as is the case with most people, my birth. In hindsight, perhaps my plan to emerge rear-ended first was not the wisest course of action; especially as my mother had a rhesus negative blood group and lived on the tiny Channel Island of Alderney which had only a small cottage hospital with no anaesthetist. However one emergency flight and one emergency caesarean (which managed to scar me as well as my mother) later, I made my entrance and got on with living. As a small child, I’m told I suffered from bronchitis but other than that and the normal knocks and scrapes that most children experience, I was always relatively healthy.

Although I have been considerably overweight for most of my adult life, I haven’t consciously suffered any ill health as a result and have never felt that my weight stopped me from doing anything until relatively recently. A few years ago, I was working at the clay shooting ground which I help to run. I had been raking flint from a newly cleared area and removing it in a wheel barrow. When I had finished I was tired and achy but nothing out of the ordinary. Shortly afterwards I started to get a sharp stabbing pain in my right hip that made me feel like my leg would give way. Sometimes this would happen about every six steps. For a long time I would just take pain killers when it got bad, although they didn’t really help and it would come and go in phases. I was told by an osteopath that it was normal for people my age to have some sort of joint discomfort, that it was normal wear and tear and I would probably just have to put up with it. After a shopping trip last October where I struggled to walk round Bluewater (never a problem before), I decided that as it was starting to affect my quality of life, it was time to do something. So, I visited the medical doctor. He referred me for physiotherapy, which took six months to come through! At the same time, I saw an ad for a charity trek, which looked really interesting, but knew that I wasn’t fit enough to do it.

Shortly after I started the physiotherapy, my husband read an article about the Ideal Spine Centre in Canterbury. As he had always suffered back problems, he decided to call for a consultation. I was asked to accompany him when he received the results of his examination and x-rays. At that time I was offered a free family spinal check. It was then that I learnt about subluxation, where the spine becomes misaligned and restricts the flow of messages through the nervous system from the brain to other parts of the body. I was told that this could be caused by the smallest accident or trauma right back as far my birth. I started to add up the various falls and knocks I had had over the years. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary and any long lasting effect, so therefore I hadn’t sought any treatment. Slipping on the ice one winter, having a van run into the back of my car, standing in the aisle on a coach when it made an emergency stop and threw me to the floor (nothing out of the ordinary?!). So I wasn’t really surprised when Dr. Farthing told me I had quite severe subluxation, but was when he told me that I had a weight imbalance of about two and a half stone! Thankfully he assured me he could help.

As I started my programme of adjustments and got to know Dr. Farthing’s assistants, I began to learn more and look forward to my visits. The staff are always so helpful and friendly and the wellness workshops are so ‘relevant and a revelation’. After four adjustments I found it necessary to raise my chair and my computer screen at work, shortly afterwards I had to raise my chair again and move my seat when driving. After the adjustments I noticed my posture improving, in addition to the psychological effect of focusing my mind on my posture, I felt taller and was constantly aware of walking and sitting in a more upright position. It became almost physically impossible to slouch. After a particularly painful experience with my hip, I mentioned it to Dr. Farthing and he began to pay special attention to that area and from that day the sharp pain occurred less and less until it was reduced to an ache if I worked it hard. I am also now sleeping better and waking up pain free.

Four months after first consulting Dr. Farthing I am even starting to lose some weight and have now signed up for a charity trek to Zambia next September in aid of the Demelza Childrens Hospice in Sittingbourne. This would not have happened without Dr. Farthing’s help and advice.

Like most of Dr. Farthing’s patients, I now think of him not just as my Doctor but as a friend and mentor. One day all health care will start with a spinal examination!!

 

"Like most of Dr. Farthing's patients, I now think of him not just as my Doctor, but as a friend and mentor. One day all health care will start with a spinal examination!!" - Ruth Murray