The doctor who learnt to walk again, using exercise

It was 15 years or so ago now that you were at Project Walk.

So do Australians with spinal injuries like yours still need to head overseas for the kind of treatment that you received there?

Towards the fourth stint of Project Walk, probably end of 2011, three trainers from Melbourne came up.

These three trainers told me that, hey, you know, we are setting up a Project Walk-like gym in Melbourne.

And I was like, God answered my prayers, Melbourne.

I didn't have to go to Carlsbad that much and that often anymore.

And these three trainers, Shane, Hayley and Jess, Jess is still there as well, were trying to set up a gym through Spinal Cord Injuries Australia.

It was called Walk on Melbourne at that time.

And that's how it all started.

When these three trainers went back to Melbourne, I was one of their first founding member clients because I saw how they were trained up by Mika.

I went, oh, they got the best trainer, my trainer.

You know, I was working with them for almost a good nine months.

Then I headed back to Project World for the last time.

I needed to say goodbye in my way, you know, on my own terms.

Once I finished up the final stint at Project Wall, I continued exercising with the three trainers at WalkOn.

And yeah, so now WalkOn Melbourne has been rebranded to NeuroMoves.

And the beautiful thing is now there are a few NeuroMoves sites in each state.

What sort of work do you do as a doctor now?

Yeah, I'm a dual-train rehab medicine physician and also a pain physician.

I mean, you've obviously got enormous amounts of training, but if you had to identify for yourself, like, what are your main skills or main strengths as a doctor that you bring to those patients? What do you think it is that is most important in what you bring?

Yeah.

I think I'm pretty authentic I just come in as it is I don't fluff around I just tell the patients honestly from my heart what I feel and of course asking their permission first because some of them might not be ready to listen to what I have to say but I speak from the heart I bring a lot of empathy and compassion because of what I've been through And what I've witnessed, the sufferings that I've witnessed amongst people with chronic pain in my time at Project Walk and in my clinical experience over the years.

As someone who has been a patient and is a doctor, the duality is actually helping me a lot to understand two sides of the coin a lot better.

You mentioned earlier that as you were a kid in Singapore and quite perfectionist about your studies and really self-critical as a young doctor, pushing yourself, pushing yourself.

How has that changed by this point and through what you've gone through? I mean, how do you think you relate to yourself differently now?