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How an ugly phrase forced me to make a change

Writer's picture: Maddie YorkMaddie York

I went to a chiropractor for a spine check-up recently. They had a promotion for free consultations and thought I may as well, as I’ve had issues for years: flat feet, inflamed knees, lower back pain. I’ve had physiotherapy and MRI scans, I wear orthotics in my shoes, and there are some exercises I’m supposed to do, but had never seen a chiropractor, so it seemed worth a shot.


The knee problem had flared up so badly recently that I stopped being able to crouch. If I did, a burning pain tore through my knees and thighs, and the only way to get back up was to shift into a kneeling position and stand up from there. When it gets this bad, as it has done on and off for the last 10 years, it comes with a psychological block about how to get down into a crouch: I stand there thinking through which muscles to use, just not able to do it.


Baz Luhrmann was right: you’ll miss your knees when they’re gone. Until you can’t crouch, you don’t realise how often this is exactly what you need to do. To tie your shoe laces or for mundane household tasks like scooping a cat poo out of the litter tray. If you’ve got children there’s a lot of getting down to pick them, or their mess, up. I’ve seen how much of that my friends with kids have to do, and often thought: if I can’t do that, can I be a mother?

What Baz doesn’t say is that you’ll fixate on other people’s healthy knees when yours are gone. I’ve been stopped in my tracks several times in the supermarket by the sight of someone bobbing down and back up again to take something from the bottom shelf, with only a hand lightly resting on her trolley for support – a motion as elegant and impossible, to me, as a ballet move.


I have mostly found ways to do the things I need to do without crouching, but given myself back pain in the process, because of too much bending at the waist. I’ve wiped up spillages by sweeping a wet wipe around with my foot – gets the job done but takes a lot longer. The workarounds are not always feasible, particularly in public: you can’t just sit down in the supermarket aisle in order to reach the back of the bottom shelf. I mean, you could, but I would find that mortifying and instead, given I’m also too embarrassed to ask for help, I’ve gone without buying bottom-shelf stuff.


I’ve worked on crouching over the years, and have had periods of being able to do it. The most helpful thing was when I spent an afternoon in my friend’s living room, taking her instruction in how to bend. Not only has she been doing pilates her whole adult life, she’s also a school teacher. She was in the middle of her teacher training when I took up hours of her time being gently coached in crouching, with cushions banked up all around to catch me. I had told her how mortified I was, that this thing that looked so easy for other people to do, I just couldn’t do any more, and could she help?


My horror at this phrase, and at the quote the clinic gave me for how much my diagnostic scans would cost, proved to be a line in the sand

As I made my first attempts to show her what I could manage, she gently and patiently said: ‘No, see, what you’re trying to do is actually a plié.’ The whole thing was absurd but hugely helpful and by the end of that afternoon, I had managed to crouch, safely padded by my friend’s cushions and tremendous kindness. I couldn’t yet get back up again, but I went away with the determination to keep practising what she’d shown me (and greater love and gratitude for my friend than ever).


But, years after that, the problem persists, and I’m fed up with feeling limited in how I move, which is why I found myself at a chiropractic clinic in Canterbury, hoping some insight into my spine might unlock something. Maybe it would all rest on some easily fixed issue with my posture, and finally I’d get the help I’ve been needing.


I told the chiropractor everything, head to toe: the psychological block, the fear of the pain, the pain itself, the inflamed knees and weak ankles and flat feet, and the orthotics I wear every day which feel like stabilisers on a bicycle I can’t ride properly. He did a full assessment, getting me to stand, shoes off, eyes closed, and rest my head in a posture that felt natural.


He confirmed all the things I already knew, and said I needed new, better orthotics with extra areas of arch support – another set of stabilisers bolted onto the bike. He said I was lopsided, sloping down more on one side than the other – quite common, apparently. He recommended some scans and investigations to get a more detailed picture. And then he said two words that have had more impact than anything said by any other doctor I’ve seen: dowager’s hump.


Dowager’s! Hump! The hunched back of an elderly widow! Is there a more awful term? Looking at my reflection and hearing the doctor’s explanation, I could see that he was right that I was developing this thing, this stooped appearance with a bump at the base of my neck, which a lot of people who work in desk jobs end up with because we slouch over our computers. I’ve long felt like an old lady, what with the failing knees. But now I look like one too?


My horror at this phrase, and at the quote the clinic gave me for how much my diagnostic scans would cost, proved to be a line in the sand. That day, I decided that was it, I was going no further down the I-can’t-do-this path. Something shifted in how I thought about my body and my control over it.


I did not book myself in for the scans. Instead, I bought an ergonomic laptop stand and mouse to improve the way I sit while working. And I simply decided that I would be able to crouch.


I started doing it as often as I could. Crouching down to put the cat’s food down, to clear out her litter tray, to put clothes in the washing machine, to sweep something from the kitchen floor using the dustpan and brush. And not just down but up again each time, no hands pushing me up, just working hard to press through my feet and lift myself up. Yes, it hurts my knees, and I have to will myself to do it. Each way, down and up, it’s a decision and an effort. But the more I do it, the easier it is. Most importantly, I know I can do it. The psychological block has lifted.


At the supermarket, I seek out the bottom shelf, crouching down to get things just because I can, and will.


I want to be clear that I don’t think ‘just decide you can do it’ is a solution for everyone who lives with pain or limited movement or disability. I realise how callous that could sound, and ignorant. I don’t consider myself to have a disability. What I’m talking about is a minor mobility issue largely of my own making: I’ve never exercised, and have a sedentary job and lifestyle. If I’d looked after my fitness and posture better from a younger age, I don’t think I’d have these problems now in my 30s. I have a problem that, for me, is surmountable with a change of attitude and behaviour. I wouldn’t dream of offering this as a fix for anyone else.


But yes, for me, it turned out that vanity (plus unwillingness to spend large sums of money on my physical health) was motivation enough to set me off on a different course.


When I looked up dowager’s hump after my appointment I found out that the term is considered outdated, and medical professionals prefer postural kyphosis. That seems right and proper – in 2021, let’s not name conditions after a resemblance to an old lady’s hunched back – but I'm glad my chiropractor didn’t get the memo.

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