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 to go talk to someone and then come back to me and say it was okay.
What I didn’t know is that the waiting area for the drop-in Pain Clinic group was directly behind where I was sitting, and which explained why I was the only one in the main waiting area! I spotted a familiar face (from my own 5-week group) and asked her about it. She had been coming to every drop-in group since our formal group ended, so she knew what to do. When we were all ushered into the group meeting room, I saw that the procedure was to check-in by putting a piece of paper in a machine over our Kaiser card which made an impression on the paper. And then there were the familiar adhesive name tags.
There were 12 patients in the room, 5 of them men and 7 women. One man came in on an electric scooter but sat in a chair during the group activities. So there I was, in a new room with 11 strangers. Some of them were standing behind their chairs, doing various “gentle movement” exercises. Some were just sitting, some were talking, some were quiet.
Francis was in charge of facilitating the entire two-hour session as Dr. Whitehead was on vacation. We started out, as I expected, with a meditation session. I always liked it whenever Francis did the meditation sessions because his voice, though calm, is strong enough for me to hear over the music.
After the meditation session, Francis went around the room, asking each one to tell their name and one thing they are grateful for today. I said I was grateful to have had an individual acupuncture yesterday and am looking forward to more information about acupressure today!
The presentation portion was next, and it was, indeed, on acupressure. Francis had printed handouts with a dozen or so specific pressure points and what ailments they were used for. He went through most of them in detail, demonstrating where the points are and how to find them, and having the group find the pressure points on their own bodies.
During a short break, I talked to a man named Herman who had mentioned the keto diet to clear inflammation. He told me that Francis had been the one who told him about the keto diet, but Herman didn’t think Francis actually followed it.
Francis ended with a set of Adapted Tai Chi, the same set that we had been given at the follow-up group on April 11. Even the man in the electric scooter was able to do the exercises sitting down.
After the group session, I made a point of going to Francis and telling him thank you for the acupressure information.
