You might have read “This is Going to Hurt” by Adam Kay, a former doctor. A monster of a bestseller and a funny and enlightening read. You might have even watched the BBC series starring Ben Whishaw, which was a far bleaker experience. My husband bailed halfway through because he found it too uncomfortable to watch. But I loved it, if only to reassure me that I would never have survived being an actual medical doctor. Far too stressful.

I started his second book – Undoctored – thinking that it would be more of the same. It is a fantastic read. But I would advise that, whereas the first book could be considered a kind of Doctor In the House for the 21st century, nothing is off limits in the second. It goes deep and dark. Sexual assault, depression, guilt, shame. The author is so painfully open and honest that you almost want him to hold things back for his own sake. Don’t give this book to medical-obsessed Aunty Mabel for Christmas unless she is very open-minded and wants to delve deep.

However, I do like to think I am very open-minded and like to delve deep, and I was very much enjoying it when I hit Chapter 3 and noted with clinical interest that Adam’s right leg had “completely stopped working” in the plush interior of the Trump International Hotel, Las Vegas. Stopped working, in fact, to the point that he collapsed onto the carpet and lost the ability to walk.

I anticipated turning the page to find him in an emergency room being told he faced imminent surgery. However, to my astonishment, despite his description of the condition as “inexplicable ….and utterly terrifying”, and despite correctly diagnosing it as most likely a disc – unlikely to be a tumour on the balance of probabilities – he was loath to interrupt his holiday or pay for US healthcare (has he heard of medical insurance?). He actually spent the rest of his holiday wheelchair-bound, still contemplating the rare risk that he had a tumour, and not consulting a doctor. I’m sorry, but, what? Surely he was aware that the future function of his leg could be irrevocably affected? Isn’t that basic physiology? This guy was a doctor at one point?

He booked an urgent MRI for his return – (ex-doctor queue-jumping perk activated) – cancelled it a couple of times, considering it an overreaction (?!) – finally reinstated it and ended up in an office with a neurosurgeon pointing out his protruding disc and using a lot of technical language that Kay doesn’t understand. (I’m imagining the word “theca”, which often throws me, personally.)

The neurosurgeon tactfully does not visibly react when he finds out Kay has taken 2 weeks to see anyone while his leg was non-functioning. He swerves a question about how much function is likely to be restored, and then plans the surgery with the hardly reassuring line “It can probably wait until 3pm”. Yes, quite.

Kay was fortunate. It seems that he did recover full function, but really, I couldn’t quite believe what I’d read.

I resumed the story, and made my way to Chapter 10, when Kay mentions that some pain recurred in his leg. It seems that there were some post-surgical issues. He began to feel something like “bolts of electricity” which shot down his calf dozens of times a day. Apparently he’d been warned that if this happened the next surgery might involve metal rods and vertebral fusion. Oh good! Not for him, of course, but for me. More humorous insight relevant to my own field. I couldn’t wait. I was looking forward to hearing Kay’s amusing and incisive description of said surgery.

When all of a sudden, I froze. The word “osteopath” jumped into my eyes near the bottom of the page. I sat up straight and took a deep breath before rereading the paragraph. Specifically, a writer colleague of Kay had witnessed his agony at work, told him she’d had just the same symptoms, and said that an osteopath had cured them. Oh dear. While I could chuckle along at his iconoclastic references to every other medical specialty, I was nervous to turn the page here. But I did, with ominous fascination. Prepare yourself.

First shock is that he clearly designates us as “alternative medicine” and would be fully in line with an Edzard Ernst-style sceptical attitude to this field. Scornful references to “magic”, allusions to us charging “nauseating” amounts of money, footnotes explaining the placebo effect, and a patronizing contempt for our knowledge and expertise. Yes, they’re all there. All of our hard work trying to earn respect and recognition – our regulatory body, our research, our 4 years of intense training, our dissection classes, our inroads into the NHS, our evergreen popularity with patients – was it all for nothing?

Seems like it. He brackets us with sage burning, runes and dowsing rods, and buys into the idea that even if our treatment is not actually harmful, there is a danger in preventing people from seeking proper medical treatment early enough. Yes, read that sentence again. You might be thinking exactly what I was thinking. The guy who lived with a paralysed leg and existential fear of cancer for two weeks because he didn’t think it was that urgent is worried that someone tries a bit of self-help before they rock up to the GP. Fools!

Yet, despite all this, Kay decided to pay one of us “kindly wizards” a visit. He was experiencing excruciating levels of pain and concomitant sleep deprivation, and he himself also didn’t want to visit the GP. A classic word-of-mouth referral. The reasons many patients come to see us. I braced myself for the ensuing description of the consultation.

If you are a male osteopath, wear a white polo shirt, and ask your patients about their “aims and expectations” on the form you give them in the waiting room, brace yourself!

Kay lied to the practitioner about his job, saying he was a doctor of physics rather than a medical doctor. I must say, I also generally keep my osteopathic identity hidden if I go for a massage or see any other healthcare professional. I don’t want them to feel I am judging them, or am against orthodox medicine, or get into a professional conversation. I just want them to do what they normally do without any complexity. But it does rather put you at an advantage, as they think they are talking to a layman, and you are looking at what they say through your own lens of knowledge and opinion.

So, we hear that the osteopath pronounced him to be out of alignment and began by treating his shoulder. Kay, that paragon of musculoskeletal expertise, nobly resisted an urge to “correct him” and generously “let him footle” about with the “totally wrong part of the body”. He seems to consider that the osteopath might have thought the shoulder bone was connected to the leg bone. Well, I say. Make up your own comment.

Next thing, the osteopath is asking him about his blood type and discussing how it relates to his diet. Well, this is not a rabbit hole I’ve ever gone down, but I’d be interested and open enough to hear the hypothesis. Before we know it, Kay is admitting he was enjoying the massage, wondering if it actually might genuinely work, claiming there is “no evidence today” but there could be in the future. This is a good comment coming from him and I appreciated it.

At the point that the osteopath suggests that cranial might help with his eczema, though, Kay decides this has gone a bit far, and accommodatingly “lets him babble away” about how doctors don’t really understand neurology – well, I’m surprised Kay hasn’t spotted the beam in his own eye here! Next, we hear that the osteopath is linking the initial injury with the turning on of the Large Hadron Collider. OK, OK, now even I am beginning to side with Kay. I fully imagine that this might be a bit of poetic license, and maybe something half real has been enhanced for comic effect, but if not, and if it’s true, and if you are reading this, you know who you are!

Kay left the office feeling foolish for having gone, clearly considering this to have been some kind of crazy departure from reality, but, punch line for us, he sprinted away down the stairs and had to say his “leg was feeling substantially better.” This seems to me to be a fantastic result following one treatment, and despite the jokes I am grateful to Kay for admitting to this and including it in his book! I’m hoping he avoided further surgery.

Most of the medical professionals in his book (himself included) come off rather poorly, for the purpose of raising a laugh. I sincerely hope and expect that this account, too, was slightly embellished for comic effect, but well done to that osteopath. You might not have impressed him, but you certainly got him out of pain, which is, after all, what we are best at.

Thanks for reading this, and if you haven’t read Kay’s books, I would thoroughly recommend them.