By her own admission, Venus Martin has a tendency to get carried away when she’s ‘on a mission’.
The former flight attendant enjoys an active life with husband Jon (more on him later) and keeps fit doing pilates, Zumba and walking with friends.
But Venus’s usual brightness was dimmed when she developed severe back pain over Christmas last year.
‘We hosted the family Christmas for about 16 people,’ Venus explains. ‘After the event, I was cleaning up until three in the morning.’
‘I was so focused on “my mission” to clean and put everything away and I was standing the whole time.’
While she had some back pain while breastfeeding many years ago, Venus had never experienced debilitating back pain. But after the party, she went to bed and ‘couldn’t move.’
‘I couldn’t turn my body,’ she recalls. ‘I thought maybe after waking up, I’d be okay.’
‘But I had difficulty getting up in the morning, which is not normal for me. I had to take it very slowly because my back was really painful.’
After several days of painkillers and massage, the pain was still persistent.
‘Before I thought, when you overdid something, you’ll be okay after a few days. But not this time.’
‘I said to my husband Jon, “I really need some treatment.” And he said, “Why don’t you go to getback? It really helped me.”’
Jon, a former Cathay Pacific pilot, had severe back pain intermittently for 25 years before being introduced to the getback program (‘Life is for living: Jon’s back flying high’.)
Venus booked an initial appointment with Physiotherapist Jack Mason at getback South Melbourne, before moving into the exercise therapy program with Exercise Physiologist Sean O’Hearn.
Venus says that Sean was ‘taken aback’ when she rated her pain at ‘probably seven or eight’ out of 10.
‘I didn’t realise that eight is serious back pain,’ Venus says. ‘But I felt like it was for me, because I’d never had severe back pain before.’
‘It was serious for me because although I’m 62 years old, I usually do a lot of activities and I couldn’t because of the pain.’
Now ready to throw herself into the new ‘mission’ of fixing her back pain, Venus was kept in check by the getback program’s gradual progression.
‘The first time I did exercise therapy on the getback devices, I got out of the clinic and thought, “Why am I here?”’
‘It’s a very gradual treatment,’ she explains. ‘When you start it almost feels like you’re doing nothing, but eventually it becomes more challenging.’
Venus did two exercise therapy sessions on the devices per week for six weeks according to her personalised treatment plan.
‘I think by the 10th session, I didn’t have any more back pain,’ she says.
Venus is now back doing all her activities and enjoys a busy social life with husband Jon.
‘I definitely got the right treatment,’ she says. ‘As Jon would always say, “Only getback!”’
Meanwhile, Jon still flies his own aeroplane, recently joining his friends on flights to the outback. He is also chuffed that another back pain treatment recommendation has turned out well.
Jon says that in the past he was reluctant to recommend treatment programs to friends.
‘You can get burned recommending programs and people,’ he says. ‘But I’ve advocated for getback and a number of people have gone there, and they’ve all had the same outcome.’
