A Tribute to Edgar Miller, D.O.

When we were kids at school, we’d have competitions to see who had the biggest muscles. Especially the one at the back of the lower leg. We didn’t know its name then, but at medical school I learned it was called the gastrocnemius. I never won the competition but my gastrocs certainly weren’t the smallest – and of course I could show how big they were by contracting them.

But later at medical school I found that I could not voluntarily contract my left one. It contracted involuntarily when walking, but not when I told it to. A doctor then told me I must have had a mild attack of polio. And of course there was no treatment.

Over many years I’d try to make it contract but it never could. I’d flex the right and ask the left to copy – but it always refused.

Many years later, I was driving home after a treatment from my good friend and colleague, the osteopath Dr. Edgar Miller. I suddenly felt a shooting pain in my leg which quickly passed – and, lo and behold, I could contract the left gastroc! He hadn’t specifically worked on it, nor had I ever told him of the problem – I’d just grown to accept it.

I came home excited and demonstrated my – our, my gastroc and me – new skill. And sometimes I still do to sufferers. As a story:

However long you’ve had the problem, however much you’ve been told and believe that nothing can be done – you never know. You, too, may be helped by the hands of an Edgar Miller.

Always keep your hope and always look for the hands.

Hope and hands. That’s the therapeutic combination.