That time the vet treated my back….

I do hate to be a Moana McMoanyface about my back, so I promise I won’t go on too much!

I’m starting a new physiotherapy treatment on Friday which is supposed to be the berries altogether, according to any French person I’ve mentioned it to. However, I’ve still been having pain and I just felt wrong so I asked the doctor if it would be a good idea to see an osteopath beforehand, for a final straightening out. Bien sûr, he said. In fact, he added that I should see the osteopath on completion of the treatment (12 weeks!!) to see how I am.

A small aside… I effing love our local medics!! They’re all so completely accepting of complementary therapies! There’s none of the prevarication I’ve heard from their Irish equivalents : “Well, if you find it beneficial” or “I suppose it won’t do you any harm.” Just “Of course! “

But I didn’t want to see my regular osteopath, Moïra. I feel like she knows me too well at this stage, if that makes sense. And the last time I visited her I got a sense of frustration on her part that I keep going out of kilter after treatment.

One of my friends recommended an osteopath in Manosque. But it’s a bit funny, she said. This osteopath is actually a vet as well, and you’ll find yourself sitting in the waiting room with a bunch of dogs and cats!

Vet/osteopath? There can’t be too many of them around here! Yes, it turned out that this lady is the same vet/osteopath who treated Flurry and Aero three weeks ago.

So now I’ve been treated by the same vet as my horses.

How do I feel after it?

Like I’ve been hit by a train, to be honest. Her method of treatment is not like any I’ve had before. There was no clicking or crunching; no gentle finger-pressure manipulation. There was a lot of head manipulation with me lying flat on my back, followed by a lot of sometimes-painful heavy pressure treatment on my back with me lying face down.

But I felt sort of validated, or even vindicated, afterwards. I’ve been beginning to wonder if my pain is psychological, because there’s nothing major to see on my x-rays, just normal wear-and-tear arthritis. And I’ve been feeling I should be damn well getting over it by now. But this lady, like Moïra, found that my pelvis was completely thrown out to the right and the rest of me is twisted to compensate. But unlike any other osteopath or chiropractor I have ever visited, she honed in on two specific areas, one in the middle of my rib cage and the other in the upper-butt region, both of which are constantly sore. And, when the treatment was finished and she was discussing what she’d found, she said I was so crooked that it was no wonder I’ve been in pain. And all I could think when she said it was “Hooray! I haven’t been imagining it!”

It’s one day post-treatment and I ache all over, but my left hip is particularly sore, right on the spot where I was kicked by a grumpy horse twenty years ago. I blame this kick for everything, and I’m hoping that the fact that it’s sore now is a good sign.

Fingers crossed.

Now I promise to turn off Moana Mc Moanyface for a while. Hopefully she’ll be back to normal soon.