An improvement already

 My osteopath, Felicity, is lovely, so kind, knowledgeable and put me at ease straight away.  She firstly asked lots of questions - exactly the same sort of questions that both my GP and the hospital doctor asked, giving me confidence that she knew just what she was talking about.  She then had me standing in front of her, with my back towards her, gently feeling all along my spine from my neck downwards, across my pelvis to my hips each side, then down the outside of my thighs and up across my shoulders.  She got me doing some gentle bending, forwards and backwards, side to side, whilst she stood back and watched.  She said my pelvis area and lower back were incredibly tight and said that's the reason why I'm so unsteady on my feet, the muscles and ligaments are so tightly knotted in my lower back area that I'm not grounding myself in my feet, almost as if my feet weren't even connecting with the floor.  I didn't really understand at the time what she actually meant - after the treatment, however, I did understand, it became quite obvious!

I then had to lie on the treatment couch - on my back....I'd assumed it would be on my front so she could work on my back.  I had a pillow under my knees, a couple of pillows under my head, and she asked me to place both hands on my abdomen.  She slid both her hands underneath me, which she said was easy to do as my back was arched upwards, leaving a big space - she said that was another indication of how tightly clenched my muscles were, as I would have been lying flatter had my muscles been relaxed.

She spent about 30 minutes doing a series of tiny, very gentle movements of her fingers and hands - some I could barely feel, others made me yelp when she pressed on a particularly sensitive or painful spot (she seemed to know exactly where all the painful bits were!).  After a few minutes, I could actually feel my legs and back relaxing, as could she - before even I knew I was doing it.  She worked a bit on my feet too, small but firm squeezes.  

At the end of it, she asked me to raise my knees and gently rock from side to side - she said this would help to open out my pelvis and prepare me for standing up......she did have to help me up off the couch.  When I stood up, however, I could feel an immediate difference - everything felt looser.  When I was explaining it to husband in the car on the way home, I said it felt like a giant had taken hold of my shoulders, lifted me up off the ground and shaken me as if he were shaking out a towel - it felt as if all of my muscles had been loosened up.  I even felt like I was standing firmly on the ground, as if all my weight had gone down my legs to my feet - I knew instantly what she'd meant when she said previously that I hadn't been grounding myself in my feet.  How very clever of her to accomplish all that, in just one session and with such small gentle movements!

Felicity said I may well feel a bit sore tonight or tomorrow morning, even though I felt so much better there and then - she said not to rush into spring cleaning the entire house because I felt better (AS IF!!! 😂😂, no danger of that!!).  She said to lie on my back with my knees raised and do the side to side gentle rocking movement in the mornings just before getting up, to prepare my back.

She also recommended I go for a short gentle walk, just 15 mins or so, every day, to start building up my leg muscles again - she said it was quite obvious that I've lost muscle strength in my legs over the past few weeks when I've not been doing much walking, because of the pain.

It was a great experience, most enlightening, and I was pleasantly surprised to feel such a positive difference after just one session.  I'm going again towards the end of next week.