Yesterday was a day to remember, we were off early to Dublin and caught the 6.17am train, fearing with the November budget being announced that afternoon, it was probably our last free travel trip under the old scheme. Still we, that is my first and long enduring wife, Helen, who has stuck by me for nearly 40 years of marriage and two of courtship, and myself, cannot complain. We have had some smashing trips down to Anna Livia since I qualified by longevity and the Irish government, those upholders of humanitarian gestures, thrust this valuable document, this free travel pass, in my hands.
We arrived at Connolly Station bang on time at 8.45am, we were off to see our daughter Paddy Jo in her one woman play at the Theatre Upstairs in Lanigan’s on Eden Quay. I had seen the first talk-through rehearsal some weeks back and after some fine reviews in the national papers I was anxious to see the finished product.
But first things first, we had business to do at the Endorphin Release Clinic in Drimnagh, on Errigal Road, next to the Children’s Hospital. My wife had been there three times recently and found herself almost cured of a number of complaints brought on I suppose by gathering years and thinking of others rather than herself. On her first visit, she had seen her friend cured in a matter of minutes of a frozen shoulder which would have taken physiotherapists a year’s treatment to sort out. For herself, whilst previously unable to walk up and down a staircase except for a step at a time, she was now bounding up the steps like a mountain goat. Cynical me was viewing all this with a little contempt but there was, I have to say, an obvious improvement in Helen’s ambulatory performance.
We had come to meet a daughter, who was flying in from Manchester. She, on the strength of her mother’s endorsement, had booked an appointment to see if the Clinic could do anything with her sciatica, brought on by rough handling by medical staff with the caesarian procedure at the birth of her first child. She has had four other children since then and this damaged nerve condition was getting worse.
The weather intervened and daughter was delayed whilst they de-iced the runway at Manchester and we were sitting in the Clinic waiting room when John Carty, the founder and heartbeat of this practice, came in, recognised Helen and invited us upstairs to his nerve centre for tea and biscuits, knowing we had travelled so far.
We started chatting and I suppose he could see that I had a slight hint of sceptism in my voice, he said “let’s have a bit of fun” and he sat me down on a chair and attached me to this apparatus which measures the horizontal and vertical rotation of the neck. He then grabbed hold of my head and twisted it violently and dug the ends of his fingers into nerve centres under my armpit and in my neck. The result was that in seconds he had increased my horizontal neck rotation by 50% and my vertical rotation by 60%. I was dumbfounded and then he told me to breath deeply and I could feel cool fresh air hitting my lungs for the first time in years. I was more than impressed, I was bloody amazed. “That’s the kind of thing we do”, he said modestly and chuckled to himself with the look of surprise on my countenance.
My daughter arrived full of apologies and moaning how a little frost can so disrupt international air traffic. Within 20 minutes he had her sciatica sorted, her neck rotation improved greatly, her breathing and stance improved considerably and made her natal scar disappear and put feeling back into her lower stomach. She was mesmerised by the improvement in such a short length of time and she just burst into tears with the emotion of it all.
John Carty stresses that he is not a doctor or a physiotherapist, he treats both with a certain amount of disdain when it comes to the nervous system and its relationship with the articulation of the body. He approaches the corpus from a different aspect, he looks at the electrical system of the body and manipulates that back into proper working order. He is unbelievable and he treats it all as a big joke whilst talking to you but he withdraws into intense seriousness during treatment. He stresses the satisfaction he receives from patients who have been cured after years of suffering. He has even put life back into the limbs of leprosy victims in Ghana and in fact as trained up two nuns who are continuing the treatment on these poor maligned people out in West Africa and he has testimonials to prove same.
He spent five minutes with me and last night I had a wonderful sleep and woke up this morning with clear air passages, breathing deeply and letting this wonderful fresh air fill my lungs. I felt 20 years younger. My daughter e-mailed me when she arrived back in Manchester. “I am lying here breathing freely and deeply and satisfyingly in a way I did not think possible. I had no sciatica on the flight and passed a very comfortable journey. I can feel my stomach and my scar has disappeared” and that was all done in 30 minutes. She is bringing her husband the next time she comes over because John Carty said that he would cure him of snoring. He surely is a remarkable man.
So if anybody out there is not feeling good and cannot do the things they could do or are troubled by old surgery, ring for an appointment on 00353 (o)1 455 8266 and receive and expect instant relief. He is refreshingly frank about his treatment and puts a different slant on the medical world. I, the biggest cynic in Christendom firmly recommend him to everybody including doctors.
So off we trotted like young lambs and down to O’Connell Street and Eden Quay and had a late brunch of Irish Stew in Lanigan’s Bar before going upstairs and awaiting the start of Paddy Jo and her matinee performance. She was our second breath of fresh air that day. She was articulate and emotional, her timing was superb and she was word perfect in a show, she commanded for 60 minutes. To learn 60 minutes of dialogue in a couple of weeks and ally that to articulation, emotion and timing is to my uneducated mind a miracle. So we have had two miracles in one day. This Dublin place is getting better than Lourdes.