acupuncture #2

At my second appointment (Friday, three days after my first), I was laying in my recliner, waiting for K to see me, and a mother and her two boys came into the section in which I was seated.  Interesting.  I hadn't pictured non-adults getting acupuncture treatments.

The younger boy, Jon, was nervous.  He had a stuffed ladybug pillow clutched under one arm, and was incredibly fidgety.  He sat next to me and his brother, Paul sat across from me.  Their mom sat on the floor by Jon's chair.  I was curious to know what brought them here, but told myself to mind my own business.  I continued to lay with my eyes closed, trying to relax as much as possible until K was ready for me.

Jon was so nervous.  I don't blame him.  How in the world can having needles poked in your body AND LEFT THERE make sense to a seven-year-old?  I gathered from his frantic whispers with his mom that this was his first visit.  Paul seemed to know what he was doing, since he rolled up his sleeves and removed his shoes and socks while Mom rolled his jeans up past his knees.   Could be that Mom was a patient there and just knew what was expected, but maybe he had been there before, too.

Mom and Jon had whispered conversations wherein she tried to make him calm down (FYI, telling a 7-year-old to calm down doesn't work.  They don't have the self-control to make that happen.).  Jon had lots of questions.  He and Paul referred to the needles as "pins."  

Mom: "Do you want to go first or do you want Paul to go first?"

Jon:  "Paul!  He can go first!"

M:  "Shhh...ok."  (walks away for a second)

J:  "Paul!  YOU have to go first!  Ha ha ha ha ha!"

M:  "Shhh.  You have to calm down.  Just start relaxing."  Right.  Thanks for the magic words, Mom.

K was also their acupuncturist, and once my needles were in (again, about 12 total, same placements as the first time), I overheard snippets of her conversations with the boys, though I really tried not to listen.  Or mostly not to look like I was listening.  

Paul was a second- or third-grader, and did not appear to be at all nervous about acupuncture.  He may have been purposely taking it in stride for the benefit of his brother, though.  His pins were inserted relatively quickly, and then it was Jon's turn.

Jon had trouble containing his nerves to a whisper once K was at his chair.  She was wonderful at communicating with a scared kid, and made sure to talk with him mostly, rather than talking just to his mother about him.  She said they could use some kind of electromagnetic-pulse-giving device since it just pushed pin-like things against the skin rather than into it, and used an electric current, since Jon was so scared.  He liked that idea immediately.  Mom, however, was not as happy with that solution.

M:  "Jon, the pins will work better, though.  You won't have to have them for very long. I think we should do the pins."

After enough of her cajoling (nagging), Jon said, "FINE. The pins."

So much for K's attempts to ease him into the process.  Mother knows best.

K asked Jon, "How long have you had your headaches?"

Ooh, we're here for the same thing!  I wanted to tell him that and let him know about my same-day results, but it wasn't exactly the time for that, and I had a feeling that wouldn't be normal behavior.

J, in a very sad voice: "January eighth."

What?!  I couldn't keep my eyebrows from shooting up as I listened with my eyes closed.  Holy crap that is terrible.  That would be so miserable.

K:  "So that's when you started getting them? How often do you get them?"

J:  "No, it's just one.  ALL the time."

Oh wow.  Ouch.  Poor kid.

K:  "Every day?  And where does it hurt usually?  In the front, or by your neck?"

J:  "All over.  MY WHOLE HEAD."

Oh my.  I need to stop complaining.

Once they decided to go ahead with the pins, K talked to him a bit about them and where she would put them.  She calmed his fears about having them in his head, explaining that his head is where all the bad stuff is stuck and that's why it hurts all the time, so she wasn't going to put pins there.  She was going to put them in his hands and arms to draw the bad stuff down, away from his head.

While K and Mom were discussing something, Paul leaned forward a bit in his recliner and whispered:

P:  "Jon.  Jon.  You can do it!"

I couldn't help smiling a little bit.

As K inserted a couple needles, Jon asked how many he would have.

K:  "Well, I'm putting four in this arm..."

J:  "Four?  Four.  Mom, I can do four!  Only four?!"

K:  "Four here, then we're going to move around to your right arm and put four there, too..."

J:  "EIGHT?!?!"

Here, his voice raised to an alarming pitch and was not containable in whisper-form, apparently.  Not that I blame him.  He was being crazy amounts of brave, having his mom make him do the treatment when he had another less-pokey option, and then finding out that he will be stuck with twice as many pins as he had understood a second previously.  I had no problem at all with being in this section of the treatment area and dealing with this, really.  I wasn't going to fall asleep anyway, and this was interesting.

K assured him that he would only have pins in for a short time (ten minutes), and Mother reminded him that they were going to Toys R Us after they were done at the clinic.  They all agreed on where the clock's hands would be at the end of ten minutes, and K was gone to treat others.

A minute went by.  Mother sat in the chair opposite Jon, holding his book.

J:  "Mom.  Mom, hold Smiley."

I presume that Mom took the stuffed ladybug from Jon's lap and sat with it in her chair.

Twenty more seconds passed.

J:  "Mom, give Smiley lots of hugs.  He's scared."

M:  "Okay, shhh."  What a bitch.  Alright, I know that's a severe reaction, but she wasn't doing well at validating what her child full of nerves was saying to her during this entire visit.

I wondered if Jon would continue to have things to say, but he actually did stay quiet for most of the ten minutes, which I was hoping he'd be able to do for his own sake.  My previous session enforced for me the importance of making time to be in a quiet, comfortable space and relaxing.

My treatment was half an hour again.  I had gone in with a dull headache that I'd had off and on throughout the day.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the same results as after my first treatment.  I had that headache all weekend.  It dulled and strengthened at times, but never completely went away.  That was exhausting.

Thankfully, my next appointment was Monday after work, and I was hoping I'd feel better effects after that one.  This has been a very long post, though, so I'll be adding that later.