Real life | 11 July 2019

Not going to the osteopath worked a treat. Walking out of that surgery after hearing the crunching coming from inside the consulting room while another patient was being done proved to be just the cure I needed.

Now, I want to make absolutely clear before we go any further that I am not about to insult osteopaths. General Osteopathic Council, stand down. Individual enraged osteopaths, replace your receivers. Do not start dialling the switchboard. Do not begin composing emails beginning: ‘Dear Sir, I wish to express in the strongest possible terms…’

Relax. There is no need to complain. Let me say for the record: I support practitioners of alternative medicine; I couldn’t be more complimentary about complementary cures.

I applaud osteopaths. I believe in them, I admire them and all the wonderful work they do. Osteopaths of Great Britain, I salute you.

It’s just that, as it turned out, not going to the osteopath was the best thing I ever did.

I walked out of that surgery with the sound of crunching ringing in my ears and
I went home, where I lay in bed in intolerable pain, unliberated by the skills of the elaborately muscled hero who might have stopped my three-week headache by making me go pop-pop-pop like a sheet of bubble wrap for 40 minutes, and I brooded on my fate.

I had been too frightened, too cowardly, too lily-livered to put myself in his freakishly strong hands.

And so, in desperation, I decided to go back to the GP. A tiny voice inside me was still telling me a doctor might know best. Look, I can’t explain it. You might call me deluded, but this is how I felt.

So back I went to the local GP surgery and this time I got a different doctor, one who didn’t stick a thermometer in my right ear, then tell me to go home and take paracetamol like the last one.