Accupuncture

Long story short, I ended up on Friday without a car (I'm driving Meredith's Honda Accord for a few days) and went with Tricia to her accupuncture appointment, so she could drop me off at South Coast afterwards to meet up with the Partridges, & the Honda Accord they've generously loaned me.

I've never watched someone get accupuncture before, and it was really pretty interesting. For one thing the accupuncturist came in and started looking Tricia over. She made me promise not to blog about any personal medical information, but I will say that the accupuncturist looked in her ear to determine some tidbit of information about her physiology, that I previously would not have suspected had anything to do with her ear. After carefully inspecting her hand, hair, and tongue he told her to get more sleep, and lay off the chocolate. After he left the room she told me that the ear thing was right on, she hadn't been sleeping well at all, and she'd apparently pounded down quite a few ding-dongs earlier in the day. We decided that visiting an accupuncturist is a bit like going to see a fortune teller. It kind of made me want to tell the guy to come over and take a gander in my ear.

After the little consultation he took us into a room, had Tricia sprawl out on a table under some heat lamps and pretty much just started shoving needles in her arms and legs. It really didn't take him very long before she was laying there with maybe 20 or so needles poking out of her. He set a little alarm, told her to relax and left the room. It didn't seem to be all that painful of an experience for her. Although when the timer went off and the accupuncturist did not instantly reappear to pull all of the little needles out, she did start needlessly panicking about when he was going to come take them out.

I guess the removal was sort of painful, and the accupuncturist told her that had she remained calm, and not been all tensed up that wouldn't have happened. Judging from the way she was hobbling around for a minute or two afterwards I gather that it was a lesson learned, and next time she will remain relaxed for the needle removal.

Prior to this experience I've always maintained that having someone shove a bunch of needles in me wouldn't be such a great experience. Now I'm thinking that I might be wrong.