I’m in hospital. I’m here for tests on my breathing function. My diaphragm does not work. The reason it does not work is because it is holding my back up and my guts in - two functions normally accomplished by other muscle groups that have failed. The problem is fundamentally orthopaedic but so far the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital have agreed the problem is not orthopaedic. What else do these two have in common? They share a joint training program … their surgeons are buddies .. and they therefore loathe to prove each other wrong.

The world of medicine in the UK is sick. It is not underfunding and it is not overmanagement that is the root sickness. It is that doctors are a self managing club, ruled and policed by the General Medical Council who are elected, in the majority, by the doctors they police. This unfortunately means that doctoring - medicine - is a largely self-referential field in which errors and erroneous judgements and assumptions are propogated and repeated throught the club.

It is a shame for the whole of British Society that Margaret Thatcher failed to take on this monopoly of thought in the field of health. It is a shame that Blair has similarly failed to do so .. instead setting managers against doctors in an attempt to achieve the right end through the wrong means. His Government’s behaviour has lead to the entrenchment of different camps fighting a war without end.

At some point in time Doctor’s power needs to be challenged head on or the assumptions and errors of medicine will continue to multiply and enfold us all in their falsities. It is the nature of closed shops that they benefit their participants most. The ego’s of many consultants need reigning in.

At many stages in the recovery process for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse there is great doubt. This is perhaps particularly hieghtened for those who are not certain of the memories or have no certain memories at all. It is useful to recognise that perfectly normal and healthy repsonses to trauma are at work.

The human animal holds memories at bay from the conscious mind when the original events could not be processed and made sense of. In cases of extreme trauma such as sexual abuse memories and whole periods of time can be lost from conscious access as a protection mechanism.

When you start to approach a point of development where you can deal with this stuff it often comes back. For some people this is in big chunks and for others it is speck by speck. Often before memories start resurfacing to allow the trauma to be processed there is a period where the survivor starts asking “was I abused?” or “am I repressing memories”?” or somesuch. The chances are, if you are asking yourself these or similar questions, that the answer is yes.

The mechanisms of protection which have held painful truths at bay are starting to let them through. You will experience great doubt about many things at this stage including your own sanity. It is important to remember that forgetting and remembering are sane mechanisms at work. You won’t remember what you can not deal with.

At first don’t believe everything that comes into your mind. There is no need to solidify and fix things. Let the memories come in their own time as they will do so when you can cope with them. If you try to rush or force things this often backfires. You can end up having partial or false recollection which lets you know something happened but shields you from the full truth. Relax and let time be your friend and ally on this: as you grow stronger and more able to deal with your truth, you will remember it.

I didn’t grow up thinking of myself as a victim. Just as ’strange’, unusual, clever. I didn’t remember the abuse. I always had certain unusual talents particularly the arts of the mind. I mean sciences, of course. My physics teacher, when I was fourteen took me to one side and said if I worked at the subject he felt I had an unusual talent in the science. He said he thought I “could be one of the top three physicists in the world” by the time I was twenty one. I was, he said a genius.

It was a bit of a head*uck, but my head was so messed up anyway - it did not really phase me. Shortly thereafter my best friend, Michael, was killed. He was run over by a car driven by my brother and in which I was the front seat passenger. We had been in the pub together. His brother Larry ran up to the side window of the car and screamed you’ve “killed my *ucking brother”.

In any case I was at that stage in time shattered into several key personalities and god only knows how many fragmentary parts. The sexual abuse made sure of that. At age one to age seven multiple abusers took their toll on my sanity. It has been hard work growing up which is only something I started doing when I gave up trying to fit in in a world which made no sense. I decided to find out who I was.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. It was six years before I remembered being abused and only then after I had calmed my mind with meditation. Then I was strong enough to start to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. To re-live each horrific experience and integrate its’s aftermath, it’s trauma. The last four years I have well documented here before.

Being raped by two teachers age seven is the last act of penetrative violence I remember. I don’t know if I am still repressing other later or earlier incidences. I know I don’t know everything yet. I know I am still not whole, have still not solved the puzzle.

Conversation Number One - The Day after Admission

Dr Glynn “Should you really be in hospital”

Me “Let me put it this way. A year ago I was as tall as you, broadshouldered and weighed nearly twelve stone. Today I have the back of an eighty year old man, weigh eight and a half Stone and have shoulders narrower than any of your nurses. What do you think?”

Dr Glynn “Well, we won’t discharge you then”.

Conversation Number Two - Monday Morning

Dr Glynn “Tell me again what’s wrong with you”.

Me “I have a pattern of Muscular dysfunction which is maintained by and maintains a neurological deficit. It is the physiological result of being orally and anally raped as an infant”

Dr Glynn “I have no idea what we can do to test for that”.

Me “MRI scan my pelvis, hips, rectum and abdomenal musculature, my lumbar spine and right shoulder and undertake a functional test of the diaphragm”.

Dr Glynn “Even if we find what you say is wrong with you I have no idea if we have the skills to put you back together again”.

Me “No you haven’t, but I think Angela Gall at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital has. I wrote My GP this morning telling her you would say that”.

Dr Glynn “Fair comment”.

Conversation Number Three - Tuesday Afternoon

Simon (Senior House Officer on Dr Glynns Team?) “What did you need to see me for today?”

Me “How much do you know about the spine?”

Simon “Not as much as you.”

Conversation Number Four - Wednesday Morning

Paul (Another member of Dr Glynns Team) “The Neurologist you saw on Sunday morning has ruled out a neurological problem”

Me “I know the standard tests the Neurological Registrar performed looking for a neurological injury sustained yesterday don’t show anything but I’ve been compensating for these injuries for thirty seven years. Simply put, Paul, I have a return of skin sensation progressively from the neck down which is sporadic, depending on the condition of my neck. What does that sound like to you?”

Paul “A central nervous system issue”.

Me “yes. Your neurological registrar got it wrong”.

Within an hour a Neurosurgeon appeared.

However I have now been at the Royal Hotel Whitechapel for five days and they still have not MRI scanned my hips and pelvis. My right hip is swinging further and further out of joint. The degredation of muscles continues apace. The on call Orthopaedic has been on call to see me for the past three days and has not shown his ugly head. Today the Neuro-Med Physiotherapist came to see me. She could not find my notes so I gave her some history but after ten minutes she was looking at me like a madman and fucked off so quick it was frankly embarrassing saying she might be back next week. I need a back brace that takes the weight of my body and stops the progressive collapse of my lumbar and thoracic spine and hips. I need it now because the doctors have been fucking me up for the past two years. they maintain I have mental health problems. I suspect they have grandiosity problems. Most have forgotten they are just human beings like you and I. Dr Glynn is an exception. He is human, capable of humility and honesty and a genuinely nice guy from what I can see. Unfortunately he leaves most of it to his house officers who do not pull the weight he has. So i am left hanging in a bed falling apart, watching the hospital ceiling. At least if I break my back or die I won’t be discovered three years later as a skeleton and the medical negligence will be fucking unavoidable because I am “in their care”.

I really thought being in hospital would help but the speed at which some things move is frankly an embarassment. Meanwhile the nurse come round to do blodd pressure readings, washing their hands between patients and using the same blood pressure cuff for the entire ward. How completely fucking stupid is that?

Michael Jackson has been found not guilty of all the charges against him relating to the alleged grooming and abuse of Gavin Arvizo. Some would say he was vindicated. The jury in post trial interviews gave a different story. They felt that not enough evidence was presented to convict which is very different from vindication.

Presented with a weak prosecution case reliant on weak witnesses the jury had little choice in reality. There must have been some doubt even in the minds of jury members who felt there was a case to answer here. In this we are presented with a perenial problem of legalistic justice: it is always partial, always conditional.

Much evidence is what people say they heard, saw and thought. Juries must take a view on the voracity of these things. In doing so they can take the wrong view. Evidence is subject to review, updating and new analysis forever. Verdicts can not be continually updated to match.

Justice in the true sense of the word has not been well served in this case. Tom Sneddon, by chasing his own dragon of Jackson’s “Guilt”, has left the scene more difficult for victims of sexual abuse. There will be a little bit less belief and a little bit more reluctance to prosecute than before the trial. Tom Sneddon has hurt abused children and helped abusers - something he surely must regret and which must have been far from his mind when pressing for this ill-advised prosecution.

Ten years ago I realised that I was deeply unhappy. The depth of pain was shrouded by time, the folds of the unconscious mind and, it turns out, by a very disturbed posture.

For about seven years I ‘worked’ only on my mind and found no solice, relief or healing. Three years ago I dropped the focus on my mind, realising that the circular nature of the effort to unpick the past in this way was not working. I began to focus instead on my body.

Previously I had been physically healthy, fit and strong. I used to manage ski resorts and was snowboarding for six hours a day. The past two years has been a journey of great difficulty as I have slowly unwound my body and one by one muscles have come back to life which have not worked for thirty years.

My pelvis was twisted. My right hip was twisted. The gluteus medius on the left and the gluteus maximus and psoas on the right did not function at all. My upper body, twisted by the pelvis, twisted back on itself and collapsing the right lung into a small part of my lower chest. This twisting also meant I could control my right leg, even though half the muscles were ‘missing’ others in my abdomen and lower back took over. My pelvic floor stood idly by and watched all this going on. Few of the back muscles of my body on the right side worked, not least the trapezius. Many other muscles in my body overworked. My neck and head, in a final twist, has been locked into an incredibly painful position to counterbalance the rest of my body and the twisting forces in these major mucscle groups.

I have learned I was raped as an infant and that has been the cause of my deep unhappiness and physical problems. I learned to walk in this twisted way that evolved to avoid the pain of the rape. I also learned to look normal despite this and so that I would be left alone.

Unfortunately, too normal, especially for the medical doctors. They, being fooled by my apparant straightness, could not detect what my body was doing, even though they could identify many muscles not functioning. I am being a little generous. The doctors are fundamentally ignorant about the body and it’s ability to compensate - in short they are fooled by their own expertise.

The other significant consequence, as anyone with a little knowledge of the body could tell you, was on my hieght. At the age of thirty eight I have increased in hieght by over two inches in two years. When my body finally straightens up fully I am about six foot and one inch. My full adult hieght, all my adult life, was five feet and ten and one quarter of an inch.

Some psychologists and therapists would tell me that my inner child was doing all this. The truth is that habits of body and mind were formed to avoid the pain in my body and the pain of the memories. As I have unwound the habits of body, the mind too has found release. The Buddha taught all about this over two thousand years ago. He taught that five Skandhas (or “heaps”) of habits dictated who we were. The first habits in the heap are the habits of body. These must be undone for the other habits, of mind, to be laid bare and worked upon.

So the answer to the question posed in the title of this piece is that healing is found first in the body. And as the body unwinds the mind follows naturally. The healing has to be complete, body and mind, or bodymind as I prefer to use for it’s indispensible merging of the two.

And if you find yourself deeply unhappy, what should you do? Learn to walk really slowly - it is called walking meditation - and pay attention to your body. Memory is a function of the bodymind, not just the mind. You will get to the root of it if you start with the ground and that is the body in this case.