I Was Told Nothing Could Be Done. Here’s What Actually Happened

I was in my forties when a doctor told me my lower spine was degenerating.
The diagnosis had a name — age-related degeneration — and it came with a treatment plan of sorts: a strong prescription medication called Arcoxia to manage the pain, and an acceptance that this was simply how things were going to be.
The damage was done. Nothing more could be offered.

What it also meant, in practice, was giving up golf. Not just for a week or a month, but for months at a time, repeatedly, whenever the pain became too much. If you play golf, you understand what that means. It is not just an activity. It is a rhythm, a release, a way of being in the world. Losing it — even temporarily — was quietly devastating.

I was in my forties, told my pain was permanent, and handed a prescription. That was supposed to be the end of the story. It wasn’t.

I want to be fair to the doctor who gave me that diagnosis. He was telling me what he knew, within the framework he had. Conventional medicine had done its assessment and given its honest answer. I do not fault him for that.

But I was not willing to accept it as the whole answer. Frustrated, and frankly unwilling to settle, I started listening more carefully when people around me spoke about their own health experiences.

A Recommendation That Changed Everything

It came through someone I trusted — a recommendation, as so many meaningful discoveries do, passed along quietly in conversation. There was a chiropractor practicing something called Network Spinal Analysis. Had I heard of it?

I hadn’t. NSA is not conventional chiropractic. There are no sharp manipulations, no dramatic adjustments. The practitioner uses precise, gentle touches at specific points along the spine — so light they can seem almost imperceptible. The principle is that the nervous system, when given the right cues, can begin to reorganise itself. To release the tension patterns it has been holding, sometimes for years.

I will be honest: my first response was scepticism. I was a rational person. I believed in science. This sounded, on the surface, like exactly the kind of thing a rational person should be cautious about.

But I was also in pain. And I had already been told that science, in its conventional form, had nothing more to offer me.

So I went.

What Happened Next

The recovery was not dramatic. There was no single moment where I stood up from the table and felt transformed. That is not how the body heals — and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling something.

What happened was more subtle, and ultimately more profound. Over time, I simply began to notice the pain less. Then less again. The weeks between flare-ups grew longer. The months I had to set aside my golf clubs grew shorter. And then, gradually, the pain stopped returning at all.

It has been nearly two decades. The lower back pain that I was told was permanent has not come back.

I want to be precise about what I am saying and what I am not saying. I am not telling you that NSA cures spinal degeneration, or that what worked for me will work for you. Bodies are not identical. Circumstances are not identical. The relationship between a patient and a practitioner matters enormously. And any responsible integrative health approach will tell you that there are no guarantees and no magic pills.

What I am telling you is that my story did not end where I was told it would end.

Why This Matters — and Why I Tell It

In the years since, I have walked alongside a loved one through the recovery from sudden, debilitating panic attacks — a journey that also found its resolution through complementary approaches, carefully and patiently applied. I have worked with others navigating chronic illness, burnout, emotional exhaustion, and the particular kind of despair that comes from being told your blood reports are normal but you still feel terrible.

After retiring from my career, I returned to formally study and obtained a doctorate and PhD in Integrative Medicine. Not because I needed the credentials to validate what I had experienced, but because I wanted to understand it more deeply — to be able to serve others from a place of both lived experience and rigorous knowledge.

SamataSoul grew from all of this.

The people I work with are not, in general, people who distrust medicine. They are people who have followed the conventional path carefully and found it incomplete. They are people who have been told “there is nothing more we can do” and who, like me, are not willing to accept that as the final word.

They are people who are ready to look further.

Is This You?

You might be reading this because you recognise something in your own story. Perhaps you have a diagnosis that came with a prescription and a shrug. Perhaps you are exhausted in a way that no blood test has been able to explain. Perhaps you are in your fifties and realising, with a mixture of urgency and hope, that there is still time to build the foundation of health you never quite got around to.

Perhaps someone you love is struggling, and you are searching on their behalf.

Wherever you are in that journey, I want you to know this: your story does not have to end where you were told it would end.

That is what SamataSoul is here to explore, together.