Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Lost Qi

I had the worst acupuncture of my life today. If good acupuncture can unblock your qi, my qi is trapped in a dungeon right now. The hospital I get treated at kept saying they were building an acupuncture room and were going to offer it for free, yippee... yip no! They told me they'd hired someone and did I want an appointment, hell yes. So I went today and turns out the room isn't done so they stuck me in a chemo chair in the bright, noisy ward and I'm sorry to generalize, but the distance in finesse between eastern and western trained acupuncturists is more than an ocean.

This woman who mentioned "her partner" more times than I can count and went on and on about her perfect job and perfect life and taking her two dogs to work with her and running on the beach with them, blah, blah, you're gay, big deal and thank you for sharing the details of your perfect life with me while I'm here for some relief from chemo and my perfect-life threatening disease. Ugh. Then she jabbed some needles in me and left.

I spent the next 10 minutes? 20 minutes? I don't know, however long I was in the chair screaming in my head, I almost pulled the needles out myself and ran for it. And then I realized the absurdity of being in a chemo chair on a non-chemo day, that is just wrong and I did it to myself. I fantasized about Dr. Xu the acupuncturist I've been seeing at the other hospital coming to rescue me. Transporting me to her warm little room where she silently moves around the table like a graceful jaguar inserting needles here and there that I don't even notice, as if she's been doing it since birth. Making sure I'm comfy, cozy and warm before turning out the lights and turning on the nice soft asian music. Her broken english pep talks, I'm coming back Dr. Xu, you're a great deal and free was too good to be true.

This whole day just sucked. J had a horrible dentist appointment which put him over the edge, so we had hours of drama and misery, I finally curled up on the couch with a blanket over my head, sometimes you just don't know what to do. It was mostly blood sugar, I know this, the post-school dental appointment deprived him of the afterschool, snack, meal, snack ritual. But my boy has a flair for the dramatic, so it was the worst day of his life, then the worst year, January, November, and October were the worst year of his life and he was so hungry, he could never eat again. Finally I persuaded him to have a smoothie, "but NO paper umbrella." So he took and hid my paper umbrella stash and that made him feel better and as soon as he drank, his blood sugar rose and there was finally peace in the kingdom. I can't wait to go to sleep and start a new day tomorrow, some days can't be rescued and this was one of them.

4 comments:

  1. The only way the day might have gotten worse would have if lightning had flashed through the window, struck the needles in your body, and arced between them like some mad scientist's lab nightmare. Although, such an event might just aw well give you super powers. Oh well, so much for life imitating Marvel comics.

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  2. i keep waiting for those super powers of which you speak, but alas, they elude me still.

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  3. sorry ur day sucked...hard 2 believe what I was reading!! 2 bad u couldn't take that Qi and lock up her mouth... today will be much better (and btw...is there such thing as a good dentist appt?) xox

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  4. amazingly yes, he's a super trooper at the dentist but the poor kid has my teeth... cavity city! i didn't mention the part where i finally just sat on the couch with a blanket on my head while he moaned and wailed. but when everything you say makes him madder and he won't let me touch him, what are you supposed to do?

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