Pokey

10 or so years ago my brother went to see “Dr Wong” for neck pain that had never been cured by physical therapy et al. Doug came out with a wacky-big bruise on his neck, and feeling pain free the first time in ages. Dr. Wong has since retired, but luckily, an acquaintance who used to go to Dr. Wong now recommends “Dr. Kan” as his substitute.

So this afternoon I headed to Dr. Kan’s office, grabbed the proper forms sitting next to a big bowl of ginger candies (my kinda place), and was slightly taken aback when the receptionist asked me if I’d ever had acupuncture. What went through my brain was “you mean a neck bruise won’t solve all my problems?” But hey, I was open to it as 2 chiropractors haven’t cured my sciatic nerve problem, and “western types” so far tell me just to tough it out and stretch. I figure if Dr. Kan can’t solve it, I still have time to give the Weill-Cornell network another whirl pre-Bali.

So the Dr sat me on a table, asked me a lot of questions, and quickly identified the problem. He then asked me to stick out my tongue and he remarked “You didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, right?” Well that didn’t impress me too much given the circles under my eyes, but I was still game for whatever was (is?) his game.

Dr. Kan then proceeded to poke me all over asking “Does this hurt? Does this hurt? And now? Does THIS hurt? Does this hurt?” and while slightly repetitive on the verge of annoying, nothing hurt. I told him I had a high threshold for pain. He then stuck 4 needles in my left arm, 4 in my left leg, and 3 in my right arm. His instructions were to relax for 25 minutes, don’t worry about wiggling around, and I might even be able to catch up on sleep.

The needles are a bit eerie, some stick straight out, like, well, pins, some list around like weeping willow branches. They don’t hurt, but there were definite numbing tingling sensations traveling around. Perhaps this was from sitting around in a chilly room for a long time (I refuse to insert a pins & needles joke here). Next session I’m bringing a sweater and I’ll keep writing on how all this progresses.