Healthupdate [January 10th 2003]

Keeping you on your toes

Rory Hafford talks to ballet guru Sara Gannon Perez about how she overcame a serious back problem with a health system called osteopathy


  

Anthony Collins is an osteopath - but you'd never tell by looking at him.
Six foot four if he's an inch, this imposing looking Aussie knows a thing or two about the body and how it's put together. Working on Sara was like digging into the sands of time and sifting through the medical debris.
“She's been through a lot, so much so, that the original problem has remained buried from a lot of the therapists she has gone to”, Collins tells the Guide.
Collins is, to all intents and purposes, a medical detective. He doesn't so much treat a body as lay it bare, deconstructing it and putting it back together, hopefully as good as new. He could tell by the way Sara was standing that something was not at all right with the muscles in her lower back; so he began correcting her posture from the ground up! This is the essence of osteopathy.
Your first consultation begins with a complete history and assessment to identify the problem areas and possible causes. This is normally achieved through examination of the soft tissues, where muscles may be taut with matted fibres. Then the therapist will examine the range of movement of joints, noting where movement is restricted or excessive.
Most medics worth their salt will say that the person with the last say on the effectiveness of any treatment should be the patient. Sara Gannon Perez sums up the worth of osteopathy in two simple words: ‘very effective'. Many people have told her over the years to quit. But ballet is not so much what she does…it's what she is. It would be like asking her to stop breathing. Now the co-director of the Irish Ballet School can breathe a little easier.You can contact The Priory Clinic at Priory Hall, Stillorgan, County Dublin. Tel: 01 – 283 5566

To visit the Priory Clinic website - click here.
To make an appointment email us at: info@prioryclinic.com
You can tell just by looking at some people what it is they do for a living. Dubliner Sara Gannon Perez is one such person. When she walks into a room, her entire body screams … BALLET DANCER! She carries herself with a grace and poise that only comes from classical training. For years she has used her delicate frame in the same way a gifted writer uses pen and paper … as a forum to create beautiful images.Her career has taken her far and wide; to London and Mexico, where she decided to settle at the tender age of 19, eventually setting up her own ballet school.
Little did she know it, but at the time they were the salad days.
The general wear n' tear of life puts tremendous strain on the ligaments, joints and muscles that scaffold the body. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, something goes wrong; and you don't always know it at that moment. But then it starts to penetrate, like the distant buzzing of an alarm clock pulling you back into the realities of a day you'd rather not face.“It started as a nagging pain down my leg,” Sara tells the Guide. “Nothing too great at first, but it always seemed to be there. Then it went from nagging to chronic and I had to see somebody about it.”
That was back in 1989. Turned out one of her discs had prolapsed and taken up residence on her sciatic nerve. She had little option but to go under the knife.
“The surgery helped – for a while. Then the pain started to build again. I couldn't sleep; my movement was radically restricted. I could still teach, but teaching meant standing and that put even more pressure on the nerve.”
Life changed. Injury hits athletes and performers much more than mere mortals. The body is a temple, and any kind of assault is an attack on the citadel, the essence, the core.
“There is nothing I didn't try in a bid to get back to full fitness,” she says. “Physio, acupuncture, chiropractic, yoga, medication, you name it”.
And then, years later, she found her way to the Priory Clinic in Stillorgan in Dublin and a man called Anthony Collins.