Word: acupuncturist
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Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy the acupuncturist's needles. I can lie on a treatment table, decorated like an octogenarian's party cake for up to an hour, grooving to the warm, harmonious buzz of a balanced body. And why not? Acupuncture can scare away a migraine, soothe arthritis and calm nerves. The painless needles barely penetrate the skin. And the ancient Chinese system of medicine can do no harm...
...thought. Not long ago I went for an appointment, this time from an acupuncturist I didn't know. Worse, I'm mortified to say, whose name I got from a stranger. But everything seemed fine: the waiting room was filled with reasonably normal-looking patients and the treatment rooms, while unadorned, were generally clean. Then came the first needle. Bam! It shot into my abdomen, immediately followed by a sharp pain in my side. "Oh, that hurt you because you have problems there," said the acupuncturist. She explained that she performed a special, deep acupuncture, in which needles are inserted...
...None too soon, it turned out. When I got home, my abdomen was swollen, my stomach, hips and lower back aching. I called the acupuncturist, who told me that pain was good, a sure sign that qi, the Eastern word for life force, was at work. When, the next morning I was still hurting, I went to my doctor, who performed a sonogram that showed that my abdomen was filled with fluid. The needles, it turned out, had penetrated the abdominal wall and entered the pelvic cavity. What's more, they had been placed perilously close to the abdominal aorta...
...sports radio talk-show host b) acupuncturist c) organ grinder d) mime...
...course, they don't know why. For Western scientists, the mystery is that the acupuncturist's supposed "life force meridians" on the body conforms to no biological systems that they know of. And it worries some that the cause of the discomfort is not addressed, just the discomfort itself ? rather like taking an asprin to dull your headache...