Skeptics Only
“I remember being told, ‘you have to believe in acupuncture for it to actually work.’ Well, I didn’t believe in acupuncture and I had an extreme fear of needles. So how did a skeptic with a fear of needles end up becoming a Doctor of Acupuncture? …a literal pain in the ass!”
Acupuncture & Ancient Medicine for Skeptics
My son was almost 10 lbs. at birth and his enthusiastic entrance to the world left me with a broken tailbone (coccyx). If you’ve ever broken or bruised your tailbone, you know it is an extremely painful injury and little can be done to help heal it other than time and rest. The first doctor I visited wanted to just “cut it out”. REALLY!?! There was no way I was going under the knife and was determined to find an alternative. However, 18 months of physical therapy, chiropractic, massage, and multiple visits to orthopedists and physiatrists did nothing to relieve my pain. I went from exercising 5-6 days a week to completely debilitated. Even holding my son to feed him hurt like hell. And I can tell you, it is NOT COOL to be in your mid-thirties carrying around a special pillow to sit on. Everyone just thinks you have raging hemorrhoids. I had spent close to $9,000 in co-pays trying to get better, but was still in extreme pain and depressed. I started to reconsider the surgery when a golf buddy suggested I try acupuncture. The only thing I was more afraid of than needles was surgery, so figured I had nothing to lose.
While I expected it to be painful, to the contrary, it was so relaxing that I fell asleep. After my first visit, I had about an hour’s worth of reprieve from my pain. That might not sound like much, but when you’ve had chronic pain for 18 months, an hour of feeling like your old self feels magical! After my second visit, I was pain free for 3 days. After my third visit, I was pain free for a week and within 8 visits, I was virtually pain free barring the occasional flare up.
At the same time, I realized that acupuncture had also helped me manage my stress and I no longer suffered from seasonal allergies. While going through in-vitro fertilization, I was given laser acupuncture after embryo transfer to help achieve pregnancy. Now convinced that it worked, I also used acupuncture to help facilitate my second pregnancy and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl several years later.
The rest, as they say, is history.
