It's all connected

The muscles in your back I mean.  Turns out that I don't only have a problem with my shoulder/neck but also my lower back. When the orthopaedic doctor said earlier in the week that the acupuncture I had been getting was mostly to deal with my lower back pain I was a bit surprised. I thought he had only put that down so that the health insurance would pay for it (I had heard that they don’t always pay, it depends on where the pain is) because when he asked me about lower back pain I just said, no more than usual. At my weight and sitting down all day it’s sort of inevitable that my back gets very tired and sore anyway. So today I went for my first physio session. He asked me to go back to the same place that I went for massage and heat therapy during the summer and it turns out the masseur I had before when I went to this place is probably just the grumpy one because the guy I had to day was lovely. He introduced himself before we got started and asked me questions about where and how it hurt as well as explaining what he was doing the whole time. What a difference.

Anyway, before starting the physio he said he wanted to check exactly how the muscles felt so I lay down and he started poking and prodding. He asked as well about my lower back so I tried to explain about that and then he started poking there..”does that hurt?”…”a bit, not much really”…”does that hurt?”…”nah, fine”…”does that hurt?”…”flippin heck! ow ow ow ow OUCH!. Yes.” So it loooks like I really do have a problem in my lower back as well and the pain I thought was sort of getting better is mostly getting better because I’ve just stopped moving my arm in any of the ways that I know are just going to hurt. He said I’m actually still too bad to start doing physio so today I just had a massage again. He won’t start exercises until the pain has reduced a bit because he said that just causes more damage than good – working through the pain in this case is apparently not worth it. Well, okay then. Have five more sessions over the next two weeks and we’ll see how it goes from there.

I also went to the shoemaker to sort out my new arch supports. He took the box of my foot impressions that I got from the orthopaedic doctor the other day (that was strange, it's like a shoebox filled with an oasis-like substance that I had to stand into) and then I also had to stand on this glass plate set into the floor. It was basically like a fancy foot photocopier. He said that the arch supports I have are actually completely wrong for me, I need softer ones with more support under the ball of my foot. It’ll be interesting to get them next week and see what, if any, difference they make. And at 5.61 I think the price is right, too!  The physio/massage will cost less than 20.  I may moan about how much I need to pay for health insurance every month but when something is wrong (except, obviously, for dental work) you get what you need without having to worry about where to find the money to pay for it all.  And when you've got a pain in your back, you need all the silver linings you can get :-)