Chiropractic Danger

Chiropractic – a True Cautionary Tale!

In 1997 I attended a Music Summer School. At the time I was suffering a painful neck (but had no lumbar problem).
On passing a chiropractor’s nameplate, I made an appointment to see him.

He adjusted my neck, more or less adequately even if somewhat roughly.

He then performed a horrendously fierce backward bending manipulation on my lumbar spine, such that I screamed out with the pain. Firstly on the one side, and then on the other. In all my (then) thirty years’ experience as a therapist I had never met such force. Unbelievably rough! Unaware at the time, I now know he had actually crushed my lumbar spine, forcing it in the wrong direction.

Over the next few weeks a most severe low back pain developed. I drove the seventy miles back to his clinic for three visits, until the severe and increasing pain prevented my driving at all. I was now becoming aware of a marked developing weakness in both my quadriceps. On complaining to the chiropractor he told me to “go the hospital for traction”. This vexed me greatly, as he should have re-examined me to assess developments, and he physically lived only some fourteen miles from me. My own Clinic is fully equipped with all the facilities he might need.

I sued him, and the case was settled out of court by his insurance company. However I was badly advised by my Counsel, who should have advised me in order to assess future deterioration, to wait almost to the three-year period before starting the case. The £13,000 compensation I received was grossly undervalued, as I now have severe bowel malfunction likely to need a resection with a stoma (bag) having to be fitted, and I am having a further spinal scan shortly with a view to having spinal surgery to try to improve my walking, as with both my quadriceps being partially paralysed, I can barely walk and have to use sticks. Making it very difficult to handle my patients.