Tuesday, November 24, 2015

On eating pears

Part of the pain of morphine withdrawal can be ameliorated with acupunture.  Now I would just have shaken my head in disbelief if someone told me that.  But on the way down, as I take less and less my personal brand of opiates every week, I sometimes experience withdrawal and when I do, I am willing to try anything to escape those feelings.

Thus, with 6 weeks to go until I will be morphine free, I headed off to my second appontment with Dr. Lam, MD and accupuncturist.  During his rounds today he had a medical student with him. I had a secondary question unrelated to the purpose of my appointment; handfuls of my hair are falling out of my head and I wanted to know how to alleviate that.  I told him I would accept any answer, but that he shouldn't tell me to eat more pears.

"I don't say that to my patients."

"Yes you do."

"No I don't."

"Yes, you really do."

"I only say it if they have phlem, " he said to the intern.

Dr. Lam asked the intern to list the possible reasons for hair loss and on the interview went.  Then he put the needles into my body, told me to relax, to breathe into my abdomen and that he would be back in 1/2 an hour.  I am accustomed to going to sleep in 30 seconds or less, but I couldn't make myself go to sleep in the 30 minutes I laid there.

Rebecca was also getting accupuncture at the same time and he went in to see her next.

"How are you doing."

"I am under  lot of stress," she said. "Do you have any ideas for me.  My fridge is already full of pears so don't say that."

"I don't say that."

"Well, I think you do because I buy a lot of them after seeing you."

The Dr. just shook his head and accupuntured her.

On having the needles withdrawn, I bundled up my courage and asked the internist how deep those needles go.

"Some, 1 1/2 inches."

Yikes.  No wonder I couldn't relax into sleep.

What can I say, except buy pears and in times of desperation, try accupuncture.

Arta

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