Patient Spotlight: Vlada Nebo

Vlada Nebo began seeing Ultra Sport physiotherapist, Sharron Sequeira in late 2025. Eight months into her recovery, under Sharron's attentive and personalised care, Vlada has regained her strength, mobility and confidence. Read Vlada's full story below:

"In September 2025 I dislocated my elbow - no dramatic story, I just slipped coming out of the shower. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt. The elbow was reduced under general

anaesthesia (one of my biggest fears) and I spent three weeks in a cast.

I’m a photographer, I do areal hoop for fun. I work with my hands a lot. Until September

2025, I’d never had a serious injury, never needed to think about the way I move or the way

my body works.

When I fell, my first thought before calling for help was “what if I can never hold a camera

again?”. The first thing I did was trying to move my fingers - I could move them a very little

bit. I knew it was bad straight away.

While in the cast, I did struggle with this new state of my body a lot. The simplest things, like

opening a bottle of water or brushing your hair, are suddenly unachievable and you

constantly, constantly need to ask for help. I shot a series of self-portraits to document this

state of my body; the project was later published on a feminist art platform.

When the cast came off, I could not move my arm: could not unbend it even a little or turn

my hand palm up, let alone something as advanced as touching my face. When I came to

see Sharron, my arm was completely non-functional. She told me straight away: “we’ll get it

to the state where I can hold a camera. I’m not sure about areal hoop, though”, she said, but I could see she always worked with those two activities in mind.

For a while, I was seeing Sharron every week, sometimes twice a week and doing physio

exercises 2-3 times a day. The exercises were boring, boring, painful, boring. I would cry

through a lot of this at-home physio sessions, both from pain and the frustration of losing

control over my body like that. But I also thought a lot about how my body has always been

there for me, through everything that happened to me, every job, every emotional struggle,

every adventure. “I can be there for my body now” I thought. For about three months, my life

revolved entirely around my arm. I would do my boring, boring, painful boring physio and

watch as the arm gained range of motion in tiny increments. One day, I could open the fridge again. Opening a bottle of water took much longer - it’s a surprisingly difficult motion.

One of the best things I did for my body was starting to move straight away. You don’t realise how much a localised injury affects the rest of your body - I’m glad I started moving again straight away, even in the very limited ways I could, with things like sit-ups. In the end, it made the journey back to my normal level of activity much shorter.

Sharron has been by my side through this entire journey - yes, looking very closely at my

range of motion, but also encouraging me, soothing me, pushing me to do a bit more. Very

importantly, she gently guided me to move past the “I am injured” mindset, so I felt capable,

rather than extremely fragile. Outside of the exercises, she encouraged me to return to my

work as a photographer and asked me about it every week. I’d say “unrolling the background felt strange” and we’d break down the motion, with her explaining every feeling and suggesting exercises to make it feel better. Through this journey, she dealt with a whole set of secondary concerns I developed while recovering - my wrists were hurting, I got shooting nerve pain, my shoulder wasn’t feeling quite right this week... she had an answer for every single concern.

At the end of December, just before Christmas, she said “Okay, you can try hanging. Not

more than five seconds”. And so we built it from there - in April I returned to areal hoop.

Bizarrely, I came out of this with stronger muscles than I ever had before. It also changed the entire way I move and train - I had to add weight training and pilates as part of recovery and now I can’t imagine my week without them (they also fixed my constantly hurting

photographer back).

Now, eight months from the injury, there isn’t a single thing I can’t do. But I am also newly

appreciative of how complex daily motions like waving or turning your hand palm up are. It

would be a lie to say my arm feels the same way it did before the injury and I am still training with it in mind. However, it does feel like the other side of this very long recovery road I walked.

My physio visits became rare, once every couple of months, if that. I’m always excited to

come in, because I get to chat with Sharron. She has been an incredible support in this

recovery process, being a friend, a mentor and the best medical professional I could have

asked for."