Case Notes 4, Part 5 - Simon Crittenden, I'm Dirty on the Medico's and Therapists

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I am perplexed by the medical world's ignorance of the fact a short right leg is a dominant genetic trait. I am completely dumbfounded they do not understand the fundamentals of the condition and the extent of the long term effects on our physical health and well being. I am dirty on the medico's and therapists who do not carry out a leg length discrepancy assessment in their examinations. They left me to carry a common postural hip anomaly, problematic since my teens, that has degenerated into a chronic disabling mobility and internal health condition. 

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It comes back to the First Cardinal Sign of Short Right Leg Syndrome…the left hip rotation thing. In my fourteenth and fifteenth years I grew six inches each year. I suffered as the left hip began rotating doing its anatomic adjustment to accommodate an increased leg length discrepancy. After a few months the initial discomfort passed but for the rest of my life I was dogged by a twinge in the left Sacro-Iliac Joint that was NQR. Now in my 60's it has degenerated to a significant injury and disability. This could have been avoided if screened for SRLS in my teens and treated accordingly. A 5mm heel lift has proven sufficient to manage the overall condition today. I have a chronically injured SIJ susceptible to crippling flare ups if I lift heavy objects; weights greater than 10kgs or 20kgs can trigger it. I once routinely manhandled 50kg to 100kg items. That type of effort is totally out of consideration now.

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Five decades have passed since my fifteenth year. I have lived in six countries. I have attended three universities and achieved a 98.4 Tertiary Entrance Ranking along the way in this country if that means anything. Four times I have trained my body to a level of development surpassing my peers. Spending ten years as a young man in the dojo of Grand Master martial artist, Prof Wong Lun OBE AOM, 10th dan Tang So Do, I learned to sense, cultivate and control Qi. I have worked in four careers. Life has not always been kind and I have suffered physical and emotional injury. I now practice as a Remedial Therapist employing an assessment and treatment framework based on the fundamentals of Physiotherapy. I have some understanding of postural assessment and I am seeing the majority of my clients present with a structurally short right leg and a vast array of complications, pain, dysfunction and injury resulting from it. I am pretty sure I am not being delusional. This is not taught in basic training. It would seem it is not taught at all. I have not yet encountered a medico or therapist that is aware of the condition in its entirety. Most are ignorant of it or choose to disregard it and are blind to its effects. I am not being unkind. This is merely the truth of the matter.

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I have identified the key features of SRLS, have a plausible theory for the presence of this dominant genetic trait and specified a rudimentary assessment and treatment protocol. My experience treating the condition is not yet extensive. However, considerable success has been achieved with a number of clients who suffered long term acute conditions. I would describe my understanding of the condition as comprehensive. My research findings on the topic are described on this site.

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