Adventures in Acupuncture

I went to my third acupuncture appointment today. I have always had muscle tension and pain on my right neck and shoulder and my right knee. I decided to try acupuncture and see if it helps with my chronic pains. Every visit has been a learning experience so far.

First visit
I closed my eyes the entire time that the doctor was putting the acupuncture needles on my neck/shoulder and knee areas. I heard that acupuncture doesn’t hurt, but it did. The needles are not as big as syringe needles; they are a lot skinnier. However, I conclude that they still inflict pain as they puncture the skin. Then wires were connected to some of the needles to send a very low “voltage” of electricity- is that the right description? It’s just a little bit of electricity going through, enough for me to feel it but not enough to go through my entire body. The electricity part was a little freaky. Then the doctor pointed a heat lamp to my neck and he left the room. The heat lamp scared me a little bit too.

Wouldn’t the needles get too hot and burn me? The doctor went about the routine and I figured that he must know what he’s doing. None of his other patients must have been rushed to the emergency room after the needles overheated from the heat lamp and caused 3rd degree burns on the patients’ skin, otherwise (as I still hoped that he was exercising sound judgment) he would not leave me with the heat lamp with all those acupuncture needles sticking out of my neck.

Second visit
The second visit involved the same routine with the needles, the electricity, and then the heat lamp. However, this time, I was surprised to also get 3 needles on my head. I have never actually watched how he put the needles in (simply because I know it’s going to freak me out even more), but there’s some kind of tapping, almost like he’s hammering in a nail, that is involved in inserting the needles into my skin. I felt the taps on my head and I had this picture in my head of the doctor hammering these needles on the top of my head. It was a comical picture, despite the creepiness factor since this is my head that is involved.

Third visit
I woke up with a really stiff neck this morning. I think this had something to do with a very stressful dream that I had and I was probably tensed up the whole time that I was asleep. I looked forward to my appointment this morning and hoped that the treatment would help with my muscle tension.

Same routine today and, although I was curious and very tempted to watch the needles go in, I opted not to. The needle set up process still bothers me because I don’t particularly like needles (I wondered who does, but there has to be some freaky folks out there who enjoy getting needles and so I stopped wondering). The needles really hurt as they went in my tensed muscles, I actually didn’t think that they were going to go in at all.

The doctor pushed on them with more force that usual and the doctor noted to me that, “yes, I can feel that your muscles are really tensed.”

Thanks for that diagnosis, doc, I can feel how tensed my muscles are too as I wondered if the needles were going to break from all the muscle the resistance.

He hooked me up to the electricity gadget and left the room. I wondered why he only hooked it up to my neck and not my knee, but I figured (again) he knew what he was doing and so I should just go with it. It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later that I moved my right leg that I realized that I did have electricity going to my knee. I just didn’t feel it in the beginning for some reason. I have to say that my tensed neck and shoulder did feel a lot less tensed even a couple of seconds after the needles (finally) went in.

The doctor then came in later with a big box and a smile on his face that expressed a kind of excitement, like a “look what I have for you to try” kind of look. He introduced me to Chinese cupping, well, cups. The box had several sizes of cupping, cups in it. I’ve seen this before on TV somewhere, but with the person using fire in the cups to produce the suction. The doctor showed me this handle type thing that connects to the cups to do the suctioning and said, “We don’t use fire anymore.” (Thank goodness!). “Although,” he said, "it does leave some bruising." The cups are supposed to help with my muscle tension, and I agreed to try them.

After he took the needles out, he put 2 of the cups on my back, around the shoulder area- same area where the needles were just in. Immediately, a little voice in my head gave me another thought to be apprehensive about.

If I just had needles back there, wouldn’t the suction from the cups suck my blood out? I had another picture in my head, this time it was my blood squirting out of my skin in a continuous, streaming fashion, filling up the cup that is stuck to my skin. But then, my rational little voice told me that he must know what he is doing. I’m sure he has not had any patients lose life sustaining amounts of blood with this Chinese cupping method, or he would not be leaving me in this room with these cups.

The cups hurt, but it did give me more relief with my muscle tension. The doctor took the cups off after about 2 or 3 minutes and said that, “yup, there’s some bruising.” He said that he’ll do the cups on my next visits also.

It’s interesting to me how much pain one has to endure in order to get rid of other pains! But, I’ll keep giving it a try until I either get rid of my shoulder/neck and knee pains, or I get fed up with all the needles and suctioning and I just decide to suck it up with my chronic pains.