Main session 3 today. Milly has been really pulling at the fur on her hip; vet says it is very common for chronic type pain to manifest across the body but once you start 'releasing' those areas, it all tracks back to the original source of the pain - and the rest of it is mainly because of posture changes to try and cope with the worst pain. So with Milly it looks as if the left hip, where she is fur pulling, is where the main source of pain is, and in the interim it has perhaps got a bit 'worse' because other muscles have now been pinged out of spasm.
So today the vet concentrated on the left hip; it was really interesting to watch, because Milly has pulled the fur out on that bit so I could see exactly what she was doing. The needles were going in quite deep, about 3cm in some places, and the vet holds them there and occasionally twists/moves them up and down, and she places her hand around the needle to hold Milly still and to feel the muscles twitching. Some of the twitches were making the needle move so the acupuncture is clearly getting right into the muscles which have spasmed and got all tense.
I'm certain that she is not arching her back as much when she walks now, so I'm really hopeful that with a couple more sessions, she'll be much happier. I took some video of her walking at the start of the sessions, so I'll try and take some more in a week or two and we'll see if purrs peeps can spot the difference