Day 1 First Acupuncture

The doctors office was very much a doctors office in a western medicine context. The only real difference was a white noise machine and a light ambient music in the background. In fact before any acupuncture began the checkup was very much western. Pulse, weight, height, blood pressure. These were all taken and scrutinized. He was very much concerned with the coating on my tongue and the strength of my pulse. After the basic checkup he said that my Lung Qi (energy) was very strong but my spleen Qi was weak. In Chinese medicine the spleen and the stomach are interlinked and when you treat one you have to treat the other.

After taking my basics he sent me to another room and I stripped to my underwear and he toweled over my underwear area. He talked about the needles he was going to use and where he was going to poke me and I said ok he said if theres a sharp pain to tell him because it meens hit nicked a nerve or blood vessel and I said don't worry I'll let you know. And then he went at it. The needles I could feel them go in but it was very painless and I'm very squeamish around them normally (I had to look away as he was poking me).

After about 30 or so needles in various areas (most of them around my stomach and only 1 that kind of hurt and that was in my head. I said pain and so he reinserted it without discomfort) he grabbed a heat lamp and put it over my belly area and turned it. He then attached some electrodes to some of the needles on my abdominal area and on my leg and foot. We then plaid a game of how much juice was too much and at a point where my feet were being moved by themselves but without hurting we called it good he turned off the light and left.

This part was ok, the twitching foot thing was a bit disconcerting but I got in a 15 minute nap before the machine made a funny noise and the doc came back. He turned the machine off and pulled out the needles (this was also painless) and decided to put on some rubber gloves and message my stomach and legs. This was actually a lot more unpleasant than the needle part, he very much grabbed my intestines through my skin and made shapes with them inside me. After 5 minutes of this he decided to use what amounted to a hand operated floor buffer on me instead, that wasn't so bad especially on my legs (they were a bit tense). After that he put what essentially is small needles attached to skin colored adhesive bandages on acupuncture points on my ear. I asked him why not use ear staples. And he said because this is much less invasive and ear staples have to be put in every 6 weeks with a higher chance of infection and cartridge damage.

I paid (I'm going to have to fight with my insurance but I was pretty sure that I would have to anyways) scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday and left.