How do you feel about needles?

Or Adventures in Accupuncture

My voice has still not come back all of the way from the laryngitis episode. It is better than it was pre-prednisone. Instead of being barely able to whisper, I sound like I smoke three packs a day. There are still several months heavy with tree pollen for me to deal with and I'm worried. It feels like I need to push the reset button on my immune system. Sooooooo, I decided to give accupuncture a try. I had my first appointment on Friday. Would you like to know what it is like?

First, the nice, French, accupuncturist lady (NAFL, for short) took a lot of time asking me about my symptoms, checking my pulse and looking at my tongue. She asked me if I wanted to see the needles and I said "yes." The needles used are disposable, about the thickness of a piece of hair and flexible. (Maybe don't look if you are squeemish.)

NAFL announced that I should lay down on the table on my back and that she needed to be able to access my wrists and ankles. She briefly left the room. Okey dokey- I pushed up my sleeves and rolled my pants legs up a bit, laid down and closed my eyes. She returned, cleaned the areas to be "punctured" with an anticeptic, and proceeded to put a needle in my left wrist area. It stung just a bit, but didn't really hurt. I ended up with needles in both wrists, three needles in my face- between my eyebrows and one on either side of my nose, and needles in both ankles. She then said I needed to lay there on the table for 10-20 minutes and to let her know if there was any pain or problems and she left the room.

There was nice, soothing, new-agey, Asian music playing and it relaxing laying there. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on just being still. After a while the nice lady came back into the room and felt my pulse. "You need a little more time." She left the room again. I continued to focus on staying relaxed. After what seemed like a fairly short time, she came back into the room again and checked my wrist. Whatever had happened was enough and she started to remove the needles. This felt like a slight tugging, but did not hurt. "When you are ready, come out to the waiting room and we will finish up." I lay there for a bit longer, collecting my thoughts, got up from the table and left the treatment room.

NAFL gave me some Chinese herbs in capsule form to take (3 pills, 2 times a day) and suggested I come back in a week. That will be $75.00 please.

So, I'm taking the herbs and going back next week. I gave it some thought and realized that my expectations aren't that high. It was relaxing, at the very least. If it works - great. If not, it was worth a try. I've certainly spent that much on allergy meds and MD visits in the last couple of months which aren't working. I'm on day two of the herbs - not much is different. I'll report back on whether it seems to work or not.