A testimony from Andrew Gonzales, regarding the healing of my feet after turning to Wendy Wilson an occupational therapist and a friend.
My problem started in the beginning of 2011, when I started having problems with standing on both my feet.
I was in so much pain after standing on my feet for most of day that I felt like crying because the pain was so bad. In the end I ended up speaking with my store manager to let him know the kind of pain I was in. The pain got so bad that I ended up being absent from work for two weeks because I was struggling even to walk. I decided to put my private medical insurance into use when the doctor referred me to a consultant to find out why I was in so much pain.
I was sent to a physiotherapist where he would look at the muscles in the bottom of my calves and he would look at the souls of my feet and massage both areas. The pain would subside for a couple of hours and it would come back twice as painful as before. I saw the physiotherapist twice a week for six weeks, but because I went back to work it was still very painful and I could only really stand on my feet for half an hour before I had to sit down to take the wait of my feet.
One day Wendy Wilson approached me and asked me “how my feet were”. I told her that “I was still in a lot of pain and that I was struggling to walk because of pain”. Then Wendy started tell me about a couple of friends she had seen regarding pain they had in parts of their body. She also told me that sometimes pain can stem from another body part and could be caused by reasons connected with their postural (body) alignment. Wendy offered to see me to see if she could help so we arranged to meet the following week.
When Wendy came to see me, the first thing Wendy asked me was “walk up and down” for her. Then Wendy asked to see how I sit and stand up from a chair. Then Wendy wanted just to see how I would stand. After 15 minutes Wendy took all the information and said to me that my posture was all wrong from how I walk to my sitting and how I even stand. Wendy asked me to lie down on my back with my knees raised up from the floor, then asked me to do some exercises around the midsection of my body. The exercises Wendy asked me to do I could not do, it was like my body didn’t know how to move in the way Wendy was asking me to move. After assessing this Wendy said to me that “we need to strengthen the middle area (muscles) of your body”. Wendy started to massage the muscles in the lower area of my back. I will be honest this was painful. Then after this Wendy started to massage muscles in my calves and the part of my leg underneath my calf. After Wendy did this she asked me to do the same exercise as before by lying on my back with my knees raised of the ground and raise the lower part of my back of the floor. So after the massage on the lower part of my back I was able to do the exercise I wasn’t able to do before.
Then Wendy started to teach me the correct way to sit and stand up from a chair, and then she started to teach me the correct way of how to stand with my feet more together and not wide apart. After this Wendy taught me how to walk properly with my head held high my back straight and my feet pointed straight forward. Wendy left me with the exercises to strengthen the middle area of my body and how to stretch my calve muscles and told me to keep practising these. Then Wendy told me to keep practising the correct way of walking, sitting down and standing up from a chair plus the correct way to stand, and Wendy said that “it’s really important to change the bad habits I had learnt over the years” concerning these things.
I can honestly say that one hour with Wendy Wilson did more than the six weeks I had with the physiotherapist. Wendy only saw me three times but by the time Wendy was finished I was nearly pain free.
I was so glad that Wendy spoke with me when she did because it had been suggested that I might need surgery to solve the pain I had in my feet. I would recommend Wendy Wilson to anybody who has pain in their body because of the knowledge and the understanding Wendy has of the human body and how it works. So Wendy I would like to say a personal thank you for everything you did for me.
With Gratitude
From Andrew Gonzales
