Pain Anyone?

I have been battling for the past few weeks with a torn hamstring.  The pain comes and goes and seems the worst when I am laying down, which becomes a battle when I am trying to sleep.  I have heeded the warnings from my doctors….do not run, do not do leg weights.  I feel like a sloth not doing anything.  I have been walking but then the spasms take over after.  I don’t push it.  I ice it, I take over the counter pain meds, I rest as much as I can.  And I have tried acupuncture.
I have had great success in the past with acupuncture, although it seemed like a crazy road to get to where I believe in it’s benefits.
My first experience with acupuncture, I walked into this little old house and my nose was immediately bombarded with strange scents and smells.  All the different herbal potions and lotions were lined on the shelves and I was greeted by a small lady who was very pleasant and took me immediately to a room.  In this room was a crudely made bed.  When I say crudely made, I don’t mean the linens.  It looked to me like something I would find in a summer camp, if the summer camp had no carpenters to make beds.  I think with my one year of shop in high school, I could make something that looked better than this.  But, I wasn’t here for a spa, I had serious stomach pain that no doctor could figure out and a friend told me that this lady could cure anything.  So I laid down on my back after explaining the pain.  She poked and prodded my stomach, nodded and then started the needles.  As she was inserting the needles, I thought that this was nothing like I had worried about.  I barely felt the needles at all.  Then I watched as she hooked something up to each needle with endless snaking wires heading back to a machine.  She said she would be back in about 20 minutes, turned the machine on and left.  Well, this is when I began freaking out.  This machine with it’s endless snakes of wires was sending jolts of electricity into my body!  Ok…a little dramatic….more like shock waves….but none the less, I didn’t like it.  With the bed and now this, all I was thinking about was the horror stories I had heard from years past of shock therapy for the insane.  Great.  Eventually, the 4 hours ended (ok, 20 minutes) and the demon machine played a tune….Happy Birthday….really?  Happy Birthday?  Are you freaking kidding me???  The lady came back, unhooked all the snakes, I mean wires and took the needles out and told me to come to the front.  I went up to the front counter, paid and walked out.  It wasn’t until after the shock wore off of what had just happened that I realized for the first time in 5 months, my stomach pain was gone.  I actually wanted to eat something!  Well Holy Mother of God, it actually worked!  I am a believer!!
Now, as much as I am a believer, I am a skeptic.  I started doing some research and by talking to others found out that there are different kinds of acupuncture, ones that don’t include shooting electricity through your body.  Whew!  Ok, I just might give this another chance!!
So when my first migraine hit, I thought of trying this once again.  This time, there was an acupuncturist in my chiropractic office (which I have to admit, I was trying out different chiropractors also, since I couldn’t find one that I actually felt did any good).  I am led into the acupuncturist’s room and immediately feel at home.  This room has a massage bed, bookshelves overflowing with books, diploma’s on the wall (which after doing research about the last place, I found out that the lady who treated me was taught acupuncture by her husband who had passed away and she had no other formal training…scary in itself…right??).  The lady came in, introduced myself and we discussed my headache.  She gave me a gown and told me that she would just need my shirt off, I could leave my bra on and sat there….never made a move to leave.  Now, I am far from shy.  It does not bother me to change in front of others but this seemed a little weird…especially since she didn’t even turn to her desk…but OK.  Then she tells me to sit on a chair and lean onto the massage table.  She is chattering away about things and tells me where there are relaxation points, one being on the top of my head.  So she puts a needle in the top of my head….ouch…that hurt!  Not like a “holy crap, someone just hit me with a hammer” kind of hurt but more like a “Man, these mosquito’s are getting big” kind of hurt.  Then a few more in my head.  Just as I am thinking, so why did I have to take off my shirt, she starts manipulating the needles in my head by turning them.  This is when it happened.  My vision started going blurry and then black.  HOLY CRAP I AM BLIND!  I naturally calmly say “Excuse me Miss but it seems that my sight has been lost”.  Yeah right!  Anyone reading my blog or even this post knows that I would never calmly say this….damn right, I freak!  My hands fly out to grab onto the table and I say, quite loudly, “I’m blind!  My vision is gone!  What did you do???”.  She twists again and there it comes back and she calmly (truly calm, which freaks me out more!) replies “oh, that’s normal.  There is that better?  Tell me when it is fully restored”.  Fully restored my ass.  I tell her in no uncertain terms that once it is restored, she will be taking these needles out of me and I will be walking out of here and I will not be paying for this crock of shit appointment.  She gets upset and tries to explain that it is because of my headaches that my vision went away and that if I would only sit down she could help me.  By then my vision is back, needles are out, my shirt is on and I have the door open, telling her that she is never going to touch me again and if my headaches were causing vision loss, I think that I would have not been able to see before I walked into her voodoo office (yes, I used the word voodoo).  The receptionist stops me as I am putting on my coat and shoes and asks me how I would be paying.  I once again use my words not so carefully and tell her and the rest of the waiting room that there will be no way in God’s green earth that I will be paying for today nor ever coming back to this voodoo clinic just to have my vision taken away and storm out.  I get out to my car, take a deep breath and then proceed to go about my day with my headache, which by the way has gotten worse.  I grab a coffee, because caffeine might help and do some retail therapy…because that is always a cure for something.  At the end of my day, I head home and once I am in the bathroom, washing my hands and happen to look at myself in the mirror, I see that people must have truly thought I was a crazy lady all day, as there, perched on the top of my head like the newest fashion statement was a needle, still stuck in the top of my head.  Yep, never going back to that voodoo clinic.
You would think that after these two experiences I would have never tried acupuncture again.  That I would say it was all voodoo and run for the hills at the mere mention of it.  But alas, I kept asking people about it and finding out more about it.  Then….I find a chiropractor whom I really like, who really doesn’t scare me and who I trust will not break my back, which believe me, is a fear of mine.  One day, I am seeing him for some back pain and I happen to mention about my headaches.  He asks me if I have ever tried acupuncture.  This was the first day he saw me as a crazy lady.  Because at the mere mention of acupuncture, I go off on my tangent of the voodoo and all that surrounds it.  He lets me rant for about 5 minutes and then tells me he is an acupuncturist.  OHHHHH…there goes that foot into the mouth again…..damn.  So he tells me of his technique and that yes, he has heard of the other two kinds that I experienced.  From the sounds of it, he is different, in a good way.  He will make the needles “bite” and that I will feel them but that is so that the body will know where to go to heal, same idea as the electric pulses but in a different way.  Ok, that sounds a little better.  He actually has an opening right then and there and I lay down on the bed (after changing into a gown, which he left the room for) and receive needles across my shoulders, in my neck, down my arms, in my hands and yes, one in the top of my head because it is a relaxation point.  I feel each and every one of those 22 needles but after the initial “bite”, I don’t feel them at all.  He asks if I am alright and after assuring him that I am, he turns down the lights and tells me he will be back in about 20 minutes.  OK.  I lay there for a minute and realize that I shouldn’t move or twitch as my muscles do not like me moving with needles in them…imagine that!  So I lay still and when the lights come on and I hear his voice asking how everything is, I realize that I had fallen asleep.  Really?  I was that relaxed?  Wowzers!  He takes the needles out, including the one in the top of my head (thank god because I would have been checking) and does a sweep to make sure there are no strays left and that I am “not leaking”, which was reassuring!
I walked out of the office that day with a new lease on life!  Very minor headache and a whole new view on acupuncture and how it really wasn’t voodoo…or was it?  It did get rid of my headache, it was just so….normal this time around!  So now, when a migraine hits, it takes me a few days of suffering, trying to get rid of it the old ways and then remember that I have to make an acupuncture appointment (if you have read my past posts and saw the one about migraines….that was wrote before I remembered to make an acupuncture appointment.<insert rolling of eyes here>).
So when my hamstring was burning and in agony, I thought what the hell, worse case scenario, he will tell me there is nothing acupuncture can do for me.  I braced myself for him to tell me just that.  To my elation, he said he could most definitely do something.  My first appointment, he put the needles in and left me alone for my 20 minutes.  I did not fall asleep this time, not because I was not relaxed but my muscles hated me.  They were spasming and every time they did, the needles bit me a little more.  I left the office that day in more pain than when I went in and the word “voodoo” started creeping in again.  But I made another appointment for 6 days later.  That night, I was in tears my leg hurt so much.  I had my daughter worried, hell I had myself worried.  But slowly over the next day, it was feeling a bit better.  Every morning after resting it, it would be stiff and sore and I could barely put on my own shoes and socks.  Throw in some over the counter meds and I would feel better.  Sat on ice packs at work.  What ever works.
I went to my next appointment yesterday and today I am feeling extremely stiff and sore.  He had been to a conference on the weekend and was taught another new technique.  He warned me it would hurt more and he delivered!  Each needle felt like it was going down to the bone!  But once the needles were done and I was laying there for my allotted time, I realized that my muscles were actually relaxing.  When they came out, my leg didn’t hurt near as much.  I did some stretching and felt not bad.  He warned me that I would be feeling it more so the next day and yes, today is a tough day…but it feels much more like I have just overworked it rather than spasms.  Could this be the start of my leg healing?  I sure hope so.  I have had enough of the pain.  Would I recommend acupuncture to anyone else?  Of course, in fact I have just recently.  I tell them of my experiences and my thoughts on each technique and let them make up their own minds but hand over my true acupuncturist’s business card and tell them to call him.  I would hope they do their own research and find what works for them and decide which technique <cough, voodoo> doesn’t work for them.