Good News! I Have Pink Eye.

Well, that's not great news. But it is a minor health challenge which I can document and share. And yes, I will be using Chinese medicine. Take a look at my post from last year.

Acupuncture Fire Treatment

Here's a special technique they don't teach you in school.

More from Help Is on the Way

In medicine we like to stay grounded only in what we can observe. Observation forms the cornerstone of all types of medicine, Chinese or Western or other. We observe people's tongues, the color of their faces, their posture and gait, the quality of their speech, even what they smell like. Modern tools like blood tests and MRIs allow us to observe in a different way.

But what if you observe something that others can't necessarily see? Here's another clip from the L.A. Weekly story Help Is on the Way, by Courtney Moreno.

I didn’t think I’d be able to fall asleep sitting in the rig, but in the end I did. I slept and I dreamed. In my dream there was a clean white room: white walls, tile floor. John Doe was lying on the floor, still naked but cleaned up: no sign of blood or brain or even the wound for that matter, and his skin and tattoos were gleaming. His eyes were closed, he wasn’t yet dead but not alive either, and whatever life existed in him was in the form of a kind of coiled-up and angry tension: Some part of him refused to let go.

I got underneath him very carefully. Curled up in a ball, my head lowered, my breathing labored, I inched his torso into a sitting position by leaning my body weight into his back and pushing the ground away. It was slow, meticulous work and he was unnaturally heavy. His arms were relaxed at his side and his head was tilted back resting on my serpentine spine. His mouth was ajar and through the open channel of his throat came a kind of smoke or light. Every time I nudged him, his body relaxed a little more, and that strange substance slid out, curling up into the air around him.

That smoke, that light was grateful to be going. It was grateful to be going, and the more it left him, the lighter and more relaxed his body became. No tension, no ugliness, no holding on. Just a body on a tile floor, with smoke and light in the air around it, and me crouched underneath.

I want to be that grateful when I go.

L.A. Weekly: Help Is on the Way

Take a look at this excellent piece of writing from ambulance driver Courtney Moreno. It's hard to convey, through writing or any other medium, what an experience is like for those who weren't there. Far from straight reporting, this is like a mini-memoir, a look at her life as an exhausted, blood- and brain-spattered, coffee-drinking cigarette-smoking hero.

Let me tell you a secret: In our job, it’s better when there are things to do. The worst kind of patient is the one we can’t help. Want to know the most infuriating chief complaint out there? Abdominal pain. We hate treating abdominal pain in the field. When someone has abdominal pain, whether it’s mild indigestion or a life-threatening aortic aneurysm, the treatment is the same: Drive to the hospital. That’s it. They could have an ulcer, blood in their GI tract, kidney stones, a bladder infection, appendicitis; they could have internal bleeding from a bruised solid organ or the swollen infection of a hollow one. They could be throwing up bright-red blood or vomiting “coffee grounds” — digested blood. This could have been going on for weeks or hours. The most you can do on your way to the hospital is get an accurate description of where in the body the pain is occurring, signs and symptoms, and severity. The triage nurse takes it from there, but God forbid you finish your assessment on the rig and still have even one minute to go on your ride to the ER. That’s one more minute of sitting there, listening to someone scream their head off, ask for pain medicine, tell you they’re going to throw up. You can sympathize with their pain, hand them a basin, tell them no pain medicine is allowed until some tests are performed at the hospital, but what it feels like you’re saying is: I’m useless, I can’t help you; just sit tight in this overrated taxi and we’ll get you there.

Read the whole story on the L.A. Weekly website.

Jesus Christ!

What did Jesus do between birth and age 30? The Bible provides scanty details. His birth story is well-known, and everyone knows what happened later in life when he started speaking out about the political and religious situation of the time.

Well, here's one answer: he traveled to the Kunlun Mountains to learn Daoism. Huaching Ni has written a very interesting story about where Jesus learned about the nature of the universe and how he learned his special skills (walking on water, loaves and fishes, and resurrection are all covered).

I really enjoyed this book. If you're interested in Daoism and Christianity, it's a good read.

Acupuncture Awareness Day April 23rd

Acupuncture Awareness Day is coming on April 23rd. CSOMA and the AAAOM are organizing a rally in Sacramento. Check it out!

City Acupuncture of New York Blog

Sarah Sajdak of City Acu NY

Our friends over at City Acupuncture of New York now have a blog. Take a look!

City Acupuncture of New York is a community acupuncture practice. Some of my friends from PCOM started this practice.