‘You’ll come back when you’re in enough pain,’ said the osteopath as I walked out of his door. That was two years ago this week, so when I walked back through the door he raised his eyebrows and made a face. I had booked online as I lay shivering in bed with pain.
Two years ago I ducked under a fence, my neck twanged and my head exploded. The GP saw me, doling out platitudes from ‘take paracetamol’ to ‘give it a few weeks’.
After a few months, a friend recommended an osteo of some repute, but when I arrived at his surgery early and heard the bone-crunching sounds coming from his consulting room I decided I couldn’t go through with it.
Before I left, I let him put his hand on my neck and he instantly claimed he could tell what was wrong. But on the basis that he was as muscle-bound as Popeye, I told him he would snap me in two. And I fled.
The pain has never really gone away. Lately, my blood pressure has soared, which may be linked. And now I have no access to a GP even for the doling out of meaningless platitudes, because the doors to the surgery are barricaded shut, the windows plastered with Covid notices, and when you telephone a woman with a stinking attitude tells you that under no circumstances can you speak to a doctor unless you go on a special list of emergencies. And I went on that a few weeks ago with my blood pressure and got nowhere.
Then he did a massage so hard it was on a par with a Thai lady who once ran up and down my back
I became demented by that annoying mid- to low-level pain that gnaws away at you, and by lack of sleep.
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