Acupuncture

I've always been a little skeptical of acupunture. I think I can trace it back to seeing my dad on an acupuncture table with needles all over his back and legs with little trails of smole coming out of them. At the time he was desperately trying any and every therapy to try to cure the tendinitis that he had developed from printing. It gave him temporary relief, but the image of him cringing and covered in needles left a negative impression on my young mind.

Fast forward twenty something years: one of my old friends is now a chinese medicine and acupuncture specialist. My other friends have told me that he knows what he's doing, but I haven't really had the occasion to get any help from him until recently. I know from pulling my hamstring in my other leg that you need to be pretty careful with it, or things can get worse very quickly, so I called him up and managed to get an appointment at the end of the day.

I go there a little before five, and he sat me down on the automatic back rolling table, which loosened up my back and legs. From his email, I was just expecting to get a few ointments and medicines from him since he's teaching a physiology class and needed to get there right after five. However, before I really knew what was going on, I had electrodes hooked up to my leg and needles getting poled into my legs! He finished off by putting four or five needles in my left ear, but I'm not sure what those were for. After a short break he came back and pulled the needles out. I got up and could immediately feel the difference in my leg. It was still stiff, but much less painful, and seemed to already have much more mobility. I don't know which of the treatments did the magic, but I'm sold!