Friday, October 4, 2019, 3:30 p.m.
Today’s group acupuncture session was quite routine. When the medical assistant asked me for my pain level today, I said, “About five.”
Again, I got there just in time and for a long time thought I was the last one until another person came in after me. There were fewer people here today.
His name is Jorge and I still don’t know his last name.
I started mindful breathing (to help me relax) before the session started. I stopped to turn off the sound on my phone so even I wouldn’t know if it were ringing. I looked at the two posters on the wall, diagrams of the ear and the hundreds of pressure points. I wondered how they figured out which five points would give the best result. I suppose over the thousands of years of Chinese medicine practice, they had time enough to do that.
There was an old white-haired lady sitting in one corner, not in the group circle, and I presumed she was just waiting for someone who was in the group. Then another old white-haired lady in the group got up and went over to talk to the first woman. The first woman asked, “Does it hurt?” and the second one said, “Yes, it hurts.”
Moving right along. When I got up to throw away the used alcohol wipes, I saw a box of Ricola cough drops, so I picked up one and unwrapped it and put it into my mouth. Cherry. There was a lot of coughing in the room during the session, so the cough drops were needed!
I was tired so it was easier to not dwell on thoughts, but let them just flow through and move on. It seemed the session was shorter than usual (it wasn’t; it just seemed that way). But even when Jorge turned on the room light and began to remove needles from the patients, I was still the next to last one and so I had that much more time. When Jorge got to me, he seemed pleased. So I guess I didn’t drop any needles today!
