Day 318: Acupuncture

     Been wanting to do this one for a while. I spent a fair chunk of an afternoon shopping around for a clinic that looked sterile and trustworthy. What I found was a place in Boulder that was ran by a total space-case of a woman. It was called Community Acupuncture Clinic and it sat on the second level of a strip mall on Arapaho Ave, directly above a cash advancement store. I walked in for my 8:30 A.M. appointment and was welcomed by a textbook Boulderite (Boulder resident). Her office was small, so small that a client was being treated on the table right behind her desk. A fabric partition shielded most of the client, but her needle covered feet were still exposed. Most of the space in the office was taken up by bookshelves that housed hundreds of bottles of pills. She told me that they were all totally organic and described some of the uses for them. The herbs could treat everything from headaches to athlete's foot.
 
     The practitioner wasted no time as she introduced herself and began examining my wrist simultaneously. She asked me about my sleep and poop cycle as she ran three fingers parallel with a main vein in my left arm. I tried to answer the poop question, but she seemed too preoccupied with my wrist to care. She wore a sort of introspective look and kept humming a sound of affirmation as she pressed down on my vein. I made sure to look totally puzzled so she would explain what the hell it was that she was checking for. It must have worked because she told me that she was feeling my heart and lungs and liver...but she wasn't...she was feeling my wrist. This was weirding me out, and I made a mental note to do a better job of shopping around next time.

     After our little survey session, she led me into another room and had me take my shoes and socks off and sit comfortably on an old lazy boy recliner. The room was divided in two by a thin cloth barrier. The lady reclined the chair and briefly explained what the procedure would entail. In a nutshell- I was paying her to stab me with needles.
     In total, she only used 7 needles. 1 on each wrist, 1 in the center of my rib-cage, 1 a bit South of that, 1 on each shin (that one wasn't too pleasant), and one on my left foot. She aimed the needle with where it was supposed to go, then used a sort of finger flicking motion to jab it into my skin. It wasn't really painful or anything, it was more of a mild sting. My muscle twitched pretty hard on the first needle, but it was smooth sailing from then on. Once the needles were in place, she told me to just sit there and relax (which is strange advice to give to someone with newly acquired puncture wounds). She closed me off with the thin cloth wall and I focused on trying to lose focus. Eventually, I made it to that grey area of sleep, but I was awoken by the voice of what must have been another client. She was a loud one, voicing concerns about how far in the needles will go and if it's a dangerous procedure. I remember her saying something like "Should I lay on my back or my side? Well I sleep on my side, but what if I roll over onto the needles? Could that kill me?". She was going on and on about the stupid needles.This hypochondriac was ruining my relaxation. Seriously, if you're that freaked out by needles, why in the world would you ever get acupuncture? It is acute-puncture after all.

     I tried to block out the outside noises and finished my session feeling less than tranquil. The Boulderite pricked the needles out one-by-one and sent me on my way. To be honest, I didn't feel much of a difference, but then again, I didn't really have anything wrong with me in the first place. If it's not broke, don't fix it scenario fer-sher.