"Who ever touches them last is it!"

She came to the clinic for acupuncture for her stubborn back pain, on a scale of 8 out 10. Her tongue was pale, with a bright red tip, and thin white coat. While taking her pulses I noticed a small bruise over the heart pulse position on her left wrist. The pulse was knotted, intermittently intermittent.  I asked her about the bruise. She said she went to ER a few days earlier, with chest pain, and, because they couldn't do an inguinal angiogram, they retried from her left wrist.
In the process she had an allergic reaction to the dye. And her blood pressure dropped to 70/25.

Hearing this I had our nurse take the patient's  blood pressure. It was 96/66. She also mentioned that her cardiologist had put her on a new prescription, and had given her his cell phone number to call him at the first sign of trouble. At that point I walked across the hall and asked our Attending Pain Physician if he would consult with her, and possibly tweak her pain meds, since I was not comfortable doing acupuncture. I told him, based on a classmate of mine who found a heart patient dead on his table, following a potty break,  I told him I was guided by the rule, "who ever touches the patient last, before a major health breakdown, is it."

After I triaged her to the Pain Physician, I later asked him how things went. He reported that during the consult she mentioned that while she was in ER her heart stopped and they had to give her a shot to restart her heart. Bad odds. High risk. Not a good acupuncture candidate.

Acting Like A Cripple (cont'd)

The second time back the Champ  brought his daughter, his biggest fan, and cheerleader. She watched as I threaded needles through the Zhu back and hip points on his scalp again. This time we did one leg standing, then the other.  Then one legged semi squats. This time he had a family witness. No backsliding. Someone who knows who he is when he forgets.

 The hospital where he was hurt wants to make nice. Do another surgery. He wants nothing to do with it. He's gone on facebook, and the surgeons are getting concerned,  running a little scared. Sooner or later, as he continues to improve, he will get pressed up under the horns of a dilemma. Get  better, and miss Payday for Malpractice, or back-off the breakthroughs of recovery, and finesse the difference in payback for pain and suffering. (the way not to get impaled on the horns of a dilemma is to grab one of them fiercely ).

He has had a lot of that (suffering).  Stuck in a wheel chair having food spooned into his mouth,  in-between sucking down Narco. That's  when I turned him on to Tolle's The Power of Now. And asked him how good he could stand it.?

Secondary Gain Can Cripple

He staggered into the pain clinic barely able to walk. Out-patient back surgery had turned into a nightmare of extended in-patient recovery (sort of). When I called his name, and slowly walked with him to my office, he grabbed my arm and said "I wanna be a champ.  Can this make me a champ?"

He comes from the barrio, and has that Rocky Balboa toughness. So I took a chance, and said yes. (This is what the panel of Docs at the VA, assembled for my vetting there, sternly warned me to never do. Never mention possible postitive outcomes. CYA?) But that is another hospital, another saga.

Back to Rocky. Within minutes of my placing needles in the Dr. Zhu scalp points for his back and left leg, he was walking up and down the corridor without his walker, and more importantly, sitting and standing from his chair without holding on to the arms. I finished with a ASP darts in his left ear, and whispered into it, "Stop acting like a cripple!"

Of course I can't be this bold with everyone who comes to the Pain Clinic. But the opportunity, when one meets a Lion, is to play like a Lion. And the art is to distinguish them from the antelope.

Patients as teachers

It happens all the time. It happens every time. Patients teach. They tease out our skills. We just have to listen. To look. To touch. Carefully. Without prejudice. Someone once told me, "we hold the space for their wellness to show up in". And sift the root cause of their illness. Example.

Last Friday two patients thanked me. One for referring her to ER, where she subsequently had a stroke. The second for referring him to ER, where they discovered he had kidney stones. A nickels worth of needles would have delayed the inevitable.
 Knowing when not to treat, based on the muted advise of the patient. Not just their recitation of what went wrong, way back when. But right now, piercing the veil of Story. Filled with disappointment, frustation, and overwhelming, grinding pain, reveals what really needs to be known. To make a quantum leap out of the morass of misery.

The last patient of that day was a first-timer with us. She spoke only Spanish. Which warranted getting a translater on the Speaker phone, and the delay of translating questions from me, and answers from her. As well as translating questions from her. And answers from me. But the body is universal.
Her right shoulder and neck were very painful. More importantly, she had a history of breast cancer, a left side mastectomy, chemo and radiation.
 She was disappointed when I used only one needle on the opposite leg to restore 80% of her mobility. And significantly reduce her pain. As an afterthought I also did a Wind point on the back of her neck. Given the Weather's rapid 20 degree change to cold and snowy.

We wound up with about 30 minutes of talking, and 10 of acupuncture. I promised her more later. She will teach me more then.

NONE LEFT BEHIND

He came to the PTSD Clinic with a death sentence for his leg.  The VA docs said he would continue to lose function and gain pain from the gift of shrapnel stitched in his right thigh and groin from a landmine 30 years ago. Later he had rolled a jeep and crushed his shoulder.  For some fluke of fate he had gotten significant relief of that on a riverboat cruise in China, from a boat- bound acupuncturist who used a combination of bone-setting, needles and tuina massage to make it whole.  Hope from that is what drove him to my doorstep at the National teaching clinic.  One scalp needle got rid of the pain and restored function in minutes. His follow-up 2 days later confirmed he had gotten 75% improvement with that first salvo.  Treatment two focused on the shoulder with a needle through St 38 to Bl 57 points with similar results, followed by the 5 NADA ear points for the deeper, PTSD scars.  He, his wife, his farm (he sits on his tractor without pain) and his VA friends are thankful beneficiaries.  Happy July 4th ya'll. 

CRY ME A RIVER....

I have seen more patients cry at Cook County in the last 7 months than I have seen cry in 28 years of practice.  Take last Thursday.  I had a patient come in the week before for a first visit, and because she hadn't eaten yet (common instructions for the pain clinic) we went easy on her.  By that I  mean no heavy artillery.  No deep needling, strong stimulation, Northern style. Instead we put a few ear seeds on Shen Men, Zero, and her hip and leg points on the ear. She started crying tears of joy for the end of pain that she had been suffering since 1984.  She even went to church to share her story. But her mind got the best of her, suggesting it might in fact all be in her mind.  So she took off the seeds, and voila! Pain came back.  So she got a bobby pin and tried to press the points as she could remember them.  It helped a little.  After we put new seeds on her ear this Thursday. she was good to go.  We also showed her some Qi Gong exercises to extend her therapy, Energizer Bunny style.."Still Working!"

The second patient had a through and through gunshot wound to his right bicep, which immobilized his shoulder, and his hand, making him a candidate for surgery.  He also had tears tattooed on his cheekbones in memory of his fellow gang members who had been killed.  This was one serious dude. I told him that if I could get his shoulder to work, pain-free, it would probably restore his hand function as well. All it would take is a 5 inch needle going through the opposite leg, from Stomach 38 to Bladder 57.  He nodded. I did it. It worked.I wondered if their were tattoos for that.And would we both wear them?

Ear Ye, Ear Ye

In the early 50's several new patients of Dr. Phillip Nogier were coming into his office in France with similar burn marks on their ears. In each case they had been put there by a healer who had treated them successfully for back pain by cauterizing them along the helix of the ear. Taking note, Dr. Nogier went on to map out the rest of the ear, based on patient feed-back, in the shape of an upside-down fetus, and auricular therapy was born.  It is one of  the most powerful pain relieving tools in my acupuncture arsenal at Stroger Hospital. And many times I use ear-seeds for my first-time patients rather than needles, with equal effect.

To wit, Thursday I had a new patient present with low back and left leg pain at a 10 out of 10 level, not uncommon in my practice there.  She could barely walk, and when she sat on the chair in the treatment room she was curled up in a tortured knot of  torment.  She had not eaaten anything yet, and she was needle-phobic.  Not an uncommon presentation.  I expalined the value of having "fuel in her tank" to power up our therapy, which relies on moving her energy around her body to where she needs it.  Then I told her we were going to use the keypad of her ear to dirct the energy to the areas of pain, her back and left leg.  In the process she should feel some relief.

Reading her body language, I knew that she was more skeptical than hopeful, but also desperate.  I showed her the Chinese vacaria seeds mounted on little squares on tape that we use, and explained each point as I squeezed it in place on her left ear. Shenmen (Spiritgate) for stress; low back, and left leg points, I pinched each point hard and guided her fingers to them so that she could find them later, for at home relief.  Then I asked her to get up from the chair and start walking around the room. She gave me a look like I was crazy (much pain is memory of pain), but humored me. With each step her confidence grew more, and her pain grew less.  Until she was moving around the room relatively pain free, shaking her head that she couldn't believe it.