Acupuncture

Hullo!!!

After a long time without writing, I decided to come back, and use this thing as a tool to bring my sanity back.

Why am I writing in English? No, it’s not cause I have all these different personae. Really, that’s not the reason (although I tend to evade the personae issue).

It’s cause 1) I need practice 2) most people whose opinion I care about read well in English 3) some people whose opinion I care about can’t read in Portuguese and 4) Some people whose opinion I don’t really care about can’t read in English. So, I’m good.

Back to business, I am now 26 years old, and I have hernia.

Actually, it’s not really hernia, it’s a protrusion of a lumbar disc. Whatever.

Facts: I’m doing Pilates (a type of exercise, non-aggressive to the back) and RPG (NOT Role-Playing Game, though I practice that also. It’s Global Postural Repositioning, a poor but true translation).

As none of the above managed to end my pain (Pilates is working, RPG is not working at all), My doctor decided I should go for acupuncture.

Yup. Acu-fucking-puncture.

So there I am, getting rid of my clothes in a very bashful situation so a cross-eyed old man can stick a bunch of needles in my back.

Did I mention he was cross-eyed?

Oh, well. You know that yearning humans have… I tend to believe it’s the whole apple-snake thing… that you can’t ever say it’s forbidden and not expect that trying whatever you forbid is the first thing they’ll do?

The doctor tells me to explain why I’m there. I do. Apart from the episodes of pain in which I can’t move, I feel, 100% of the time, a very acute pain in the surface of the lumbar area whenever someone pressures the spot. It’s. Very. Painful.

So I tell the cross-eyed doc NOT to pressure the goddamn spot. But, as I said, it’s a snake-apple thing. There he goes and AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Fuck.

The session usually lasts 40 minutes or so. There was I, praying so that the good doctor would take pity on me and stop causing excruciating pain to my poor lumbar.

Nope. I was wrong.

The session took 1 and a half hours!!! Jeez. The doctor had to let another patient go because the simply couldn’t find a way to stop my pain. As he left the room and said “Well, hang in there for sometime, let’s see if it works”, I looked back and I found myself as a very pathetic porcupine. ¬¬

This is one of those moments when you think your life over. You see, here I am, late as hell for work, I’m not getting the HR to accept “I was getting my back pinned all over” as justification (even with a medical receipt and so), in pain, immobilized, porcupine-like and hating every moment of it. And I thought: Fuck it (I’ll do it live! – nope, just kidding)! I’m going back to Qi Gong. No more alternative treatments for me. I’m going back to the start, to something I know works.

Lesson of the day, kids: Acupuncture is NOT a pain-relief technique.