Ak-yoo-punch-her

I’ve been seeing an acupuncturist for the last couple of weeks in the hope that some good might come of it.  And by ‘good’ I mean some relief in the unrelenting and and quite severely debilitating pain I’ve been experiencing daily since the latest car accident.  I think I went into it with an open mind and realistically optimistic attitude…. but I’ve been for three visits now  and I’m not sure if it’s helping in any discernible way.

Each time I turn up, he asks me how I’ve been feeling and I try to describe my week’s aches and pains in language suitable for a twelve year old…. English is not his strong suit and I’ve noticed it’s not a good thing if I use my normally precise and often polysyllabic mode of speech as it seems to cause him to smile and nod in a vacant way that leaves me confident that he hasn’t understood a single word I’ve uttered.  So I try hard to simplify things and when I do, he goes ‘ahuh, ahuh’ scribbles down notes in some mysterious and indecipherable shorthand (Oh well, okay… it’s probably not so mysterious and indecipherable, it’s probably  just Chinese or something). Then it’s onto the table and in with the needles… in the oddest of places, back of my hands, in my feet, above my collarbone and behind one knee??  Some of them hurt, some of them make my muscles twitch and spasm and some I can’t feel at all.  Then it’s time to try and relax for a few minutes while feeling strangely like an entomological specimen.

Each visit has left me with some teeny little spot bruises where he’s jabbed me but today, there’s one spot on my neck that is still sore three hours after the needle has been removed and I can feel a bump under the skin promising to be a decent bruise tomorrow… no doubt one that my physio will get her pointy little hands into tomorrow.

I’m just hoping the acupuncturist doesn’t turn around and decide to go all medieval on my ass with them strange little glass cups that sit on a shelf in the corner looking completely innocuous yet simultaneously menacing …..