| I hadn’t planned to write about
the Ultimate Golf Doctor, but then I hadn’t planned on being
laid up with a neck that wouldn’t oblige me with its everyday
duties. Yes, it hurts me to tell you this. Literally.
As a former gymnast, I am not used to my body telling me it doesn’t
want to twist/turn/bend in various directions. When I took up
golf a couple of years ago, my biggest problem was limiting the
amount of suppleness I used so that I could build some control
into my swing. I have yet to finesse this but to my frustration
I found my mobility severely restricted a few weeks ago when I
woke up with an unbearably sharp pain in the base of my neck.
For a few days prior to this, I had suffered some minor discomfort
when I turned my head to the right, but I put it down to a stiff
neck after couple of long-haul flights and nights spent in different
hotel rooms. However, the extreme jabbing pain I felt in my neck
was unprecedented and completely debilitating.
A visit to my GP resulted in a hefty prescription of heavy-duty
pain-killers, anti-inflammatory drugs and Diazepam (move over
Shane Warne), along with a referral to the physiotherapy department
at my local hospital. I spent the week either knocked out or nauseous,
and with every attempt to do the breathing exercises on the ‘relaxation
CD’ loaned by the hospital, I just fell asleep. And the
pain still hadn’t gone away.
It wasn’t long before various friends started suggesting
I visit a specialist. There was one name that kept cropping up
– Dr Antoni Jakubowski, chiropractor to the golfing elite.
|
He’s manipulated the likes
of Nick Faldo, Retief Goosen, Thomas Bjorn and Justin Rose into
optimum vertebral alignment. Surely he could do the same for me.
“‘Dr Jak’ can fix your back,” I was told
by a number of acquaintances. His number was passed on by Frank,
a single-figure handicapper who was treated successfully by him
last year. It seemed I had the perfect, if unwelcome, opportunity
to try his talents at first-hand.
So it was that I ventured to Dr Jakubowski’s practice: the
Gonstead Clinic in London’s Harley Street. Dr C.S. Gonstead
was the first doctor in the history of medicine to apply physics
to the spine and related joints, and as a consequence of his research
studies, he established the Gonstead Method in 1923. This system
incorporates precise examination, diagnostic treatment and management
protocols in order to analyse and treat spinal and joint conditions.
Dr Jakubowski was the first fully trained and qualified Gonstead
Doctor of Chiropractic in the UK. His practice, founded in 1992,
is one of the largest specialising in spinal and joint rehabilitation.
He is also a keen amateur golfer, playing off six, and he has
dedicated much of his work to sports-related, bio-mechanic problems.
After X-raying my spine, he promptly told me I had a slipped disc
at the base of my neck. He quickly identified the exact single
vertebrae which was misaligned with the aid of a tool he calls
a ‘nervoscope’, which detects uneven heat along the
spine and can indicate inflammation and nerve pressure.
|
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