Acupuncture and Chinese Shenanigans

So there I was on break with no direction. I stared at my food in the lunch room - what's next? I had a 2 hour break and I'm sure a million things to do. Then a classmate sat down and started asking me about medical residencies specializing in biofeedback. Greg came in and he is in the neurofeedback group as well. HEY! The clinic's right there - why not?

I headed to the clinic as a patient instead of a medical student. I roamed the halls looking for the shift, but found my friend Sarah.

"Do you need acupuncture?"

I paused. "Do you need a check off?"

"No I just - my shift has one patient today, so you can totally come in and get acupuncture for cheap because you're a student."

Convincing. Well, I was there anyway...

She took my history in that well rounded, oddly charted Chinese way as a new patient with the complaint of, you guessed it, epilepsy. I feel like I should stay up really late and have a seizure just so there can be something more recent on record, but it's not really worth the overwhelming sense of doom that accompanies my bust and move.

She took my pulses and looked at my tongue - important tools in Chinese medicine. I love the tongue one and the nails. The mouth can tell you a lot about a person's health, (as can skin and other overlooked clues). Sarah left and an old Chinese doctor hobbled in and looked me over. He had a very strong accent. He asked me about mucous in my throat and coughing. Epilepsy is a "wind liver" problem and has been called "dian xian" for thousands of years.

Acupuncture hurt.

In between my first two toes, into the tendons of my arms, the inner side of my knees, in the back of my head and, the worst, the side of my big toes. All these correspond to different organs, which are not really the organs we think of. My "spleen is deficient" actually means something entirely unrelated to the organ I know about.

After about 7 minutes, (I estimate because of painful needles sticking out of my skull), a rush came over my body. It felt a little like a seizure, so out of curiosity I tried to let it happen. I snapped out of it because my finger twitched and the needle in my arm tugged - I gasped. I was wide-eyed at the intensity - did that really just happen? It's all about currents of electricity in your body, so it's possible she hit a line Chinese medicine intends to utilize.

I have no idea.

Then we went to herbs. Based on my entire profile, (not just epilepsy + human = Lamictal), my history and presentation, they came up with a mix of 11 herbs seen in the picture above. I have to boil them twice, drink 3 cups a day with meals and chew on a specific dry herb after each cup. It's all very weird, but one must remind oneself that the Chinese, despite their lack of MRIs and machines that go beep, have been treating human disorders for a bajillion.5 years. You'd have to be a pretty self-inflated Westerner to toss out all that knowledge and experience.

Of course modern science knows everything... that's why the solution to your problem lies in lifelong medication.

It's hard to not just stop taking my medication as I go through this process! Seriously.