April 27, 2018, 1:30 p.m. Today is my third individual session for physical therapy with Francis. When I checked in, the girl did not ask for a co-pay, so I’m sure someone down the line will bill me. I hate doing it like this. I would rather just pay with my card at the time…
Category: acupressure
Pain Clinic Drop-in Group
April 24, 2018 This appointment seemed so familiar (from all the weeks of the Pain Management Program), yet a little strange. I checked in and the girl at the desk took my Kaiser card and ran it through the card reader. She couldn’t seem to find anything for a drop-in Pain Clinic group. She had…
Individual Acupuncture Therapy #1
April 23, 2018, 10:10 a.m. Today is the long-awaited appointment with an individual acupuncturist (not a group of a dozen or more patients!). The assistant took me into a regular doctor’s office, small, with chairs and a patient table. Paul Simon had already looked at my medical records so he already knew everything I told…
Level 3 Pain Group Follow up
April 11, 2018 It felt like six weeks passed pretty quickly. The commute was easy and uncomplicated. Checking in and sitting in the waiting room felt very familiar although a bit strange since there was only one person I saw from our original group. After we had assembled in our group meeting room, there were…
Follow up with Francis
March 23, 2018, 11:30 a.m. Today was a follow-up appointment with Francis, the physical therapist from the Pain Clinic. Once again, he spent a full hour with me. The first thing he said was to confirm his approval of the inflatable neck traction device I had sent him a link to and which is available…
Pain Management: My Review
March 17, 2018 I have completed the 3-day-a-week 5-week outpatient Pain Management program at Kaiser. The facilitators all made it clear from Day 1 that this is not a pain relief program but a pain management! And they were right. We were not allowed to talk specifically about our pain nor about medications. I posted…
Pain Group Acupuncture #3
February 23, 2018 This is my last day of pain group acupuncture with Sophie. I have requested to be referred to the Acupuncture Clinic for an individual session. So, for that, I will just have to wait. Today only 3 of us from the class went to group acupuncture! I don’t know where everyone else…
Day 15 Pain Management
February 23, 2018 Today is the last day of the Level 3 Chronic Pain Management program! The first thing they did was have us fill out questionnaires, which I knew was coming. Yeah, by this time, I really do know my Kaiser Medical # by memory! After the meditation session, Francis led us in the…
Day 14 Pain Management
February 21, 2018 There was no Pain Management on Monday, February 19, which was Presidents Day. Today Francis did the meditation session with affirmations. He then divided us up into two groups to go through the Tai Chi routine with no coaching. I asked about acupressure and he said he would talk about it on…
Office Visit with Dr. Whitehead
January 29, 2018, 9:00 a.m. Nine o’clock seemed way too early to be up and doing anything! But it was a good session, casual and comfortable. It was mostly giving an overview of my current neck pain history and what else was going on in my life during the past year. I was relieved that…