Crippled sports stars swear by him, but orthodox medicine frowns. David Davies meets Hans-Wilhelm Mller-Wohlfahrt, the doctor who rescued Jose Maria Olazabal from despair
WHEN Jose Maria Olazabal, hunched against the pain and walking on his heels, limped slowly and very sadly into the Munich consulting rooms of Dr Hans-Wilhelm Mller- Wohlfahrt there was no hope at all in his heart.
There had been a succession of doctors before this one; there had been dozens of treatments tried, thousands of letters telling of certain cures. Why should this one be any different? “I have a different imagination,” says Mller-Wohlfahrt.
Olazabal, a rich man, had spent whatever was necessary to secure the finest opinions in the world of medicine, among them one from the Mayo Clinic in New York, where the world’s finest doctors had delivered a chilling diagnosis. At the age of 30, they said, Olazabal had rheumatoid arthritis.
That verdict was handed down in September 1995. It came with the rider that with the right medication, and rest, he could be playing golf again within six months. But it was now 12 months on, and the man who won the US Masters in 1994 was in despair. When at home he preferred to crawl around the house to avoid the agony of walking. His feet were emaciated, all skin and bones and no padding, the muscles atrophied, and the tendons shrunken. One toe had sprung out of its joint, another just pointed straight up in the air.
The Spaniard had no thoughts of playing golf: he had come to Germany seeking only the possibility of a better quality of life. Adidas had said they might be able to help in that direction by building a special shoe. With great difficulty, he was persuaded to make the trip. When he got there, a chance conversation with an old golfing friend led to the mention of this new name, Mller-Wohlfahrt, and the weary acceptance that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to do something. Why not? He’d seen everyone else. Things couldn’t get worse.
“School medicine has sharp borders and they don’t look aside, look for the alternative,” says Mller-Wohlfahrt. “I am a school medicine doctor and I had very good education for this, but in sport I saw that sometimes it is not enough. Homeopathy, for example, is not accepted, but it works.”
He is a handsome man. Long dark hair, parted in the middle, frames his face and he looks to be in his mid-thirties. He is 54. He used to work in a clinic where “I operated a lot. But,” he goes on, “there was a feeling that my speciality could be to investigate … to do more by hands than to operate.
“People said to me that I had a special sort of gift in my hands. It is hard for me to say that, but ja, many, many people have said it to me.” But this is no faith healer talking, there is no laying on of hands here. “Everything,” he says, “starts with the right diagnosis; that is always the origin of a successful treatment. When you are always trying something different – let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s try this – you will never have the big success.”
Mller-Wohlfahrt is accustomed to success. He has treated some of the world’s finest athletes and restored them to their full ability. Boris Becker swears by him, Daley Thompson did, Merlene Ottey, Frankie Fredericks, Colin Jackson and Linford Christie. He treats the German Olympic team, the Bayern Munich football team and the German national squad.
In fact it was the magic hands of Mller- Wohlfahrt that got Jrgen Klinsmann back on the pitch in time for the European Championship final last year when no one, not even the player, thought it possible.
“People say to me that there is something in my fingers, that it is different when I touch someone. Think of Jrgen Klinsmann. He had a muscle strain in Manchester last year, and we had no ultra-sonic machine. Jrgen said: `Please doctor, try anything even if you don’t believe eight days are enough. Let’s try anything and maybe I can play in the final.’
“So within half an hour we had the diagnosis and we worked day and night to get him ready. We got him out of bed at night and said `Jrgen, next treatment’ and then he went back to sleep again. It was very, very intensive and at the end we were successful.
“It was lucky … I can’t repeat it every day. The sportsman feels exactly whether you find the point, whether you are right or not. When he feels `ah, this doctor, he finds the very sharp point’ then there is a trust built up because he thinks `oh, this doctor, he knows, he knows’.”
Mller-Wohlfahrt works very largely with his eyes closed. “The eye is important,”‘ he says, “but I live from my fingers. I have to get all my information by hand. Normally when I make my investigation I close my eyes, to have a better concentration for my fingers. I close my eyes and I feel for the muscle or tendon until I have the right impression. Sometimes I need minutes, sometimes longer, it is never possible to do something very quick.
“That is why I never wear a watch. I do not do three-minute or five-minute medicine, I take time, as long as is necessary. I can’t work with a watch because I have to do what I need to do. It’s a very high responsibility and I accept this responsibility. I will not rush and say `next please, next please’. I know what it means when somebody comes to me and begs me to help. Every patient that trusts me is a big honour.”
It took very little time for Olazabal to come to trust Mller-Wohlfahrt. He knew after the initial meeting that Mller- Wohlfahrt had found something that the Mayo Clinic had missed.
But how could such a renowned and respected body as the Mayo get it wrong? Mller- Wohlfahrt said: “It is difficult to answer this question. I work since 20 years with professional sportsmen and I saw this problem in other cases. My approach is different. I don’t do so much technical investigation, or blood tests or computer tests. I like to talk a long while with the sportsman to hear his history before the problem started and I try to hear what is wrong.
“Very often I find that people give me a large part of the diagnosis by telling me. Then I take a lot of time for touching the body, to look at the joints, the tone of the muscle, to look for inflammation.
“With Olazabal the symptoms were very similar to rheumatoid arthritis but I thought the swelling in the toes could have another origin.
“Just by using my hands and feeling the spine I made my first opinion and said `something is wrong here’. I could say which segment was wrong and which nerve root was irritated, just by feeling.
“Only after this did I make X-ray and MRI scan. We made ultrasonic tests and laboratory tests and I sent him to specialists. And after one day looking we had a conference, all of them and me, and we came to the conclusion that the origin could be the last disc in the spine.
“Then I sent him to the neurologist because I said the nerve does not work, and when the nerve does not work right, the muscles get out of shape and you can feel it right down to the foot. Then other mistakes were to be seen. The foot got into the wrong position because when you have pain you start to find a position to compensate.
“Jose Maria went on playing in pain and then there was another consequence on the inner ankle where there was a nerve compression caused by walking in the wrong position.”
Mller-Wohlfahrt has also been working with Severiano Ballesteros, without quite the same success. The desperate descent down the world’s ranking lists by the Ryder Cup captain could be halted, says the doctor, if only he would fully commit himself to treatment. Ballesteros, a former world No 1, had slumped to 110th at the end of last season and after making not a single cut in any event this season is now 146th, and sinking.
“I can help Seve, but he thinks it is to be done in two days, and that is not possible. He has to come back again and again.” Although the Spaniard can play the shorter irons without pain, he dare not launch himself at the longer clubs and put some force into the stroke, because he knows his back will hurt, badly.
Consequently the ball goes all over the place and he has hardly hit a fairway for two years.
Asked if he could cure the trouble in Ballesteros’s back, the doctor said: “I can lower the symptoms a lot. Nearly every golf player has degenerative discs and joints in the lower spine and this we have to live with. But the problems come from the reaction of the body to this and the surroundings of the problem areas, and there I can do a lot.”
Ballesteros has been to Germany twice. “I think he is doing a little better,” Mller- Wohlfahrt said. “He said 35%. I don’t know what is 35%, hein? So, here’s to the next 10% and the next 10%.”
Mller-Wohlfahrt has his critics, plus the cheap and nasty nickname Dr Feelgood. His unorthodoxy, as it is seen, offends some members of the medical establishment, as does the fact that he uses injections of such constituents as shark’s cartilage, calf’s foetus, traces of iron and zinc, and amino acids.
But a charlatan he obviously is not. A long and distinguished client list, which includes the likes of Alfred Brendel and Luciano Pavarotti, attests to that, as does the fact that he has to work a 12-hour day just to try to help all those who want to see him.
Nor is he a profiteer. In Germany the government lays down a price for all treatment, “so you just put down what you did and they work out the price”.
But Mller-Wohlfahrt did actually sting Olazabal for something worth a small fortune. The deal was that if the doctor could get the golfer fit enough to play at Augusta, the golfer would get the doctor a season pass for the US Masters. Mller- Wohlfahrt obliged, and so did Olazabal. And the price? One hundred dollars.