It was in 1983 and I was 18 years old. I am less sure about the exact date, but it could have been on July 6. I remember my best friend sitting on his butt in a recently plowed field. So he was obviously alive and I could feel a profound relief about it. Still able to talk to him, I asked if he was okay. He replied affirmatively, but also calmly confirmed some pain in an arm or so. Except for the tumultous effect from a violent blow to the back of my head a couple of seconds ago, together with the freezed response I had had in the moment I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about the situation but to stay still and let it proceed until it stopped, I also felt okay. Together we had just survived a terrible highspeed car crash that has haunted me ever since.
In the next minute my breathing became increasingly harder to perform, due to a growing pain in the thoracic spine. Therefore every inhalation felt like an increasingly deep and sharp pressure was pushing back in a specific point right between the shoulder blades, which also fixated the chest from expanding.
I remember there were some people living nearby heading to the scene of the accident, although the memories are vague and fragmented. While they were still heading toward us, I staggered around the car in a weird fashion; kind of inspecting the damages and kept repeating the sentence ”What would dad say?” — since it was his car. Suddenly my legs failed me and I collapsed to the ground, and by then the first person stopped in front of us. I heard someone else shouting to someone at the closest house to call 90 000 (the Swedish urgency number at the time). I passed out a couple of times before the ambulance arrived and also during the transportation to the hospital 40 km away; being unconscious at the arrival.
The aftermath
I woke up the next day in a hospital bed and became aware of a few stitches in my backhead and one ear; feeling bruised all over but immensely grateful for being alive — it sure was a miracle. I had to stay there four more days for observance before leave was permitted. By then I was fully aware that my backhead was beaten up but also that I had problems with my neck. It became stiff now and then, so I repeatedly had to bow the head forward to stretch the muscles.
The neck issue continued on a daily basis for many years, even though very slowly it gradually faded. The pain and the stretching to reduce it became such a daily practice that it almost turned into a companion that followed me everywhere; it became my new normal. It followed me through the second half of the four year long secondary education, it followed me during the eleven months of military service, it followed me as I moved from home and far away to my first full-time permanent employment, and it followed me as I established my first long-term relationship four years after the accident.
The exceeded aftermath
Eventually it got worse in the early 1990s. One night I turned around in the bed from one side to the other. In the midst of the movement, suddenly it was like a knife stabbed me right between the shoulder blades. Yeah, just like in the accident, and I almost lost my breath from the explosive pain and the restricted expansion of the thorax.
At the time I was in my mid-20s, and since the expanded pain remained over time and grew during night time, thus creating a disturbed sleeping pattern, I realized I had to search for professional help since it drained most of my daytime energy. I cannot remember clearly whether I had done that before or not, or how it turned out, but this time I for sure put an effort to it.
Well, the family doctor at the health care center couldn’t do much for me except prescripting painkillers, but at least I was remitted to a physiotherapist. The latter helped a lot … the first four or so appointments for treatment, muscular training or both, but eventually all effects faded off and in some cases the symptoms increased. For years to come that outcome remained as a standard procedure for every new physiotherapist I visited.
Eventually it got even worse. One day I could sense a sudden pain in my left hip joint as I was out walking or as I mounted my bike, and after a fortnight or so I couldn’t lean on the left leg at all but had to use crutches. After some time it healed, but for whatever reason the hip joint obviously was inflamed. At the time I was still in my mid-20s but it would take twenty more years until an x-ray examination revealed an old scar on the joint; this much later fulfilling two out of three criterias for the Bechterew’s disease diagnosis in 2011.
Meanwhile, life went on through the years and most experiences I ever had — the big ones and the smaller ones, the good ones as well as the bad ones — I could share with the trio of pain, stiffness and sleep disorder. Together we e.g. experienced becoming a father twice and after a couple of years a separation from their mother followed by a custody battle, gaining and leaving new jobs, making a mid-life career shift by studying full-time at the university while also working half-time at one of its faculties, a new long-term relationship, shifting jobs once again, and finally BAM! heading right into a stress-related disorder characterized by mental and physical exhaustion due to prolonged stress without recovery in early 2005. (Sweden is probably the only country in the world that has defined a specific medical diagnosis for it: inanition syndrome.)
The (mal)treatment
I won’t bore you with more descriptions about all the doctors and physiotherapists I have met through the years in this case, but I would say the former are about a dozen and the latter 15 or so by now. I guess you get the picture. And maybe you also can picture the sense I eventually had of being a hopeless case for the health care system — having to find out what was wrong with my back, but also how to treat the added mostly cognitive exhaustion I now had to heal from as well.
For sure I was given some methods from the physiotherapists to gain at least some temporary relief from the stiffness and pain; and moreover I eventually received the Bechterew diagnosis, which in a sense confirmed me as a ”real patient”. But except for the prescripted anti-inflamatory medicine that didn’t help very much long-term and in time would bring its negative bi-effects, overall I could feel pretty much like a stranded whale that couldn’t keep up with the general pace out there. For quite some time I was down and out.
Into the fascia track…
Now, fast-forward into present time. Over 40 years and thus a staggering 14 600+ days of pain, stiffness and sleep disorder passed since the accident before the first time I heard about fascia. It was in the context of my hermit period in which I mainly studied trauma, the autonomous nervous system, and the vagus nerve. The combined knowledge I earned by doing so grew rapidly on me, and an insightful intuition was formed that the fascia potentially was a key component underlying not only much of the physical issues I had, but the cognitive as well. So the search for a fascia therapist became the obvious next step; and against all odds I eventually was lucky to find her nearby in the beginning of this year.
…and success
Despite the lack of special-designed tools for the treatment, she for sure made an impressive difference! Four or five sessions during spring-time reduced the symptoms quite a lot, and now and then I could even skip some days of the daily exercises that she instructed me about as well. But despite the successful improvement in spring and summer time, there was still a specific area that was neither recognized nor addressed by her due to the complexity of the entire fascia system, which made me call for further treatment a few weeks ago. An area that had been haunting me for years, stretching all the way from the right lower dorsal part of the waist up to the critical point between the shoulder blades.
A few torso and head bowing stretchings to the forward-left addressed the entire area and soon after, while the chronic stiffness suddenly was disintegrating, I had a fantastic growing experience of becoming free from decades of inprisonment. I could feel a subtle but yet obvious flow of energy through the affected area which I hadn’t felt for ages.
The relief was thus profound, and made me able to wake up 100 % fresh in the next morning; without sensing pain, stiffness or the mental fogginess which usually is a byproduct. And that kind of a smooth leap out of bed that I made, I couldn’t believe was really taking place. For sure, it was like an instant time travel back into the young body I once had. I shouted like a happy madman and sang loudly all the way into the morning shower.
Preliminary conclusions
As they say, it’s not over until it’s (completely) over. Perhaps a bit prematurely I claim the physically maltreated and psychologically untreated trauma from the car accident 41 years ago was the underlying cause for both my long-time back issues, the sleep disorder, the Bechterew diagnosis as well as the inanition syndrome. Because the results from the fascia treatment and exercises, in combination with the previous results from the trauma autotherapy, have been truly amazing and unprecedented. I have never before in my adult life experienced that many days in a row of feeling so naturally energized like I have experienced lately; physically as well as mentally. It has been an experience of blissful flow that I am immensely grateful for.
That being said, there are still some residual stiffness and sometimes even pain. And why shouldn’t it after 41 chronic years? But most of the time it does not reach above the threshold into consciousness. That is a huge success. But of course, the aspiration for a complete healing will continue.
A bonus
My way of thanking you for your interest and time while reading this story is a bonus compilation of some videos about fascia. I hope they will be appreciated, as my presentation of them also serves as my big thanks for spreading the information of an important topic.
…and finally a almost one hour documentary about fascia, made by the Swedish Fascia Guide channel:
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