Okay!!!! Out of clinic now, this was the final week's post, then the internet broke...
So here it is.
I am so sorry to not have put anything up for so long! Things got crammed, then I got sick. Now on the mend, my energy, thankfully, is up again and ready for one last week of treating patients. It has been a wonderful ride.
What has it been like?
Well...what a phenomenal experience (in all senses of the word) it has been to work at the Vajra Varahi Healthcare clinic. I can't even begin to tell you how much kneepain , back pain, and gastric pain we have all treated. We have treated stroke sequella and other hemiplegic disorders such as Bell's palsy, numerous sciatica cases (which can often be lumped in with back pain), shoulder and arm pain, numbness and tingling (in Nepali they will say 'zum zum zum zum' or 'cutta cutta cutta' for various sensations, tingling and aching, respectively) in any part of the body, headaches, and common colds. There are plenty of complicated cases, difficult at times to suss out, even harder to get straight stories, which obviously makes sussing out all the harder. I am treating a young patient with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, whose mother's only goal is to help him communicate when he is hungry, and when he needs to go to the bathroom. The only time I have ever needled DU-8 was on him, and I did it without knowing why. Thankyou, intuition. (Pardon the shoptalk, non Chinese med readers).
A patient with whom I have had the deepest connection is a patient with Parkinson's disease. I so deeply enjoyed working with her, and was terrified of her at the same time. Treating a virtually untreatable disease is incredibly challenging, especially when the patient you are working with desperately wants to be cured, and seeks numerous avenues to determine if someone can give this 'cure' to her. I've told a story about part of my experience working with this patient in a blog published on the ARP website. Please find it here:
http://www.acupuncturereliefproject.org/news-blog
Not too long ago I wrote this in my journal:
I dreamt of my patient this morning. She was young, agile, interacting with her family with an extreme lightness of character and laughter, jumping even. I was astounded, waiting for her to come in for treatment. Then I turned and there again she was, in her red sari and yellow scarf she wears every day, waiting quietly, still in the body she has come to know only in the past few years. But she didn't look sad.
If sickness strikes any one of us, or any of our patients, changing reality to a degree unprecedented, and if we can maintain any semblance of a dancing, joyful being inside, if that is what is possible with any form of medicine, then we have succeeded, somehow.
So here it is.
I am so sorry to not have put anything up for so long! Things got crammed, then I got sick. Now on the mend, my energy, thankfully, is up again and ready for one last week of treating patients. It has been a wonderful ride.
What has it been like?
Well...what a phenomenal experience (in all senses of the word) it has been to work at the Vajra Varahi Healthcare clinic. I can't even begin to tell you how much kneepain , back pain, and gastric pain we have all treated. We have treated stroke sequella and other hemiplegic disorders such as Bell's palsy, numerous sciatica cases (which can often be lumped in with back pain), shoulder and arm pain, numbness and tingling (in Nepali they will say 'zum zum zum zum' or 'cutta cutta cutta' for various sensations, tingling and aching, respectively) in any part of the body, headaches, and common colds. There are plenty of complicated cases, difficult at times to suss out, even harder to get straight stories, which obviously makes sussing out all the harder. I am treating a young patient with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, whose mother's only goal is to help him communicate when he is hungry, and when he needs to go to the bathroom. The only time I have ever needled DU-8 was on him, and I did it without knowing why. Thankyou, intuition. (Pardon the shoptalk, non Chinese med readers).
A patient with whom I have had the deepest connection is a patient with Parkinson's disease. I so deeply enjoyed working with her, and was terrified of her at the same time. Treating a virtually untreatable disease is incredibly challenging, especially when the patient you are working with desperately wants to be cured, and seeks numerous avenues to determine if someone can give this 'cure' to her. I've told a story about part of my experience working with this patient in a blog published on the ARP website. Please find it here:
http://www.acupuncturereliefproject.org/news-blog
Not too long ago I wrote this in my journal:
I dreamt of my patient this morning. She was young, agile, interacting with her family with an extreme lightness of character and laughter, jumping even. I was astounded, waiting for her to come in for treatment. Then I turned and there again she was, in her red sari and yellow scarf she wears every day, waiting quietly, still in the body she has come to know only in the past few years. But she didn't look sad.
If sickness strikes any one of us, or any of our patients, changing reality to a degree unprecedented, and if we can maintain any semblance of a dancing, joyful being inside, if that is what is possible with any form of medicine, then we have succeeded, somehow.
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