New clinic!

It's already halfway through the new week, in a new clinic. It's been interesting, and I've got so much time and so little to do.... wait. Scratch that. Reverse it.

Thank you.

So on Monday I went to talk to Ms. Liang, and she told me that the doctor upstairs in the inpatient department that she wanted me to work with wasn't going to be available this week, so she was moving me to a different outpatient clinic for this week, and then next week I'd be upstairs. That was okay with me -- although I didn't really think that I'd gotten everything I could from Dr Wang, I also knew that I was reaching diminishing returns, especially with my mediocre Chinese.

There were also two Americans who would be in clinic with me this week, Zach and Josh, a couple of guys from the TCM school in Hawai'i who were getting some clinical credit before ending a two-month trip here in China.

I'll let that line stand alone, but they're good guys, and it's nice to chat in fluent English with a mostly-common cultural context for a change. (Josh is from Berkeley, actually, so there's a totally-common context there.) I won't go into much detail about them at this point, except to say that we've been having fun hanging out together and the next time I'm in Oahu (the first time I'm in Oahu), I'll definitely want to visit them, and also check out the school, which seems to have a very Daoist perspective on Chinese Medicine.

So now, I'm two doors down, seeing largely the same kinds of patients -- facial paralysis, hemiplegia, other sequelae of stroke, and a bunch of neck and back pain. But I'm also getting quizzed by Dr Yang on point functions (differentiate the indications for San Yin Jiao, Tai Xi, and Fu Liu), needling techniques (describe the difference between tonification and sedation needling techniques when rotating the needle), and TCM theory (explain why the patient with depression and poor appetite now has dry, dark patches of skin on her face). So far, I'm doing pretty well. I'm also getting lots of new information and demonstrations on all three counts, too.

This includes "point" or "leopard-spot" needling, which I'd never seen before -- think of the effects of plum blossom needling but much more gentle and suitable for delicate areas like the eyelid. Or other locations that are less painful to needle (上八邪Shang Ba Xie, for instance, just proximal to the MP joint between the metacarpals instead of in the webbing of the fingers). So there's a lot here to learn -- and lots of opportunity to practice my Chinese, of course.

Yesterday afternoon, Dr Yang had a lecture, so we went upstairs to follow someone who was doing cupping on the inpatients. These are folks who are within a couple of months post-stroke -- in some cases, hours after being admitted -- and it's an entirely different experience. These are folks lying in beds, five beds to a ward with no curtains, family all around, and two acupuncture treatments per day -- one in the morning and one in the evening. They also get cupping (Jia Ji points for five minutes a pop) once a day, and some get Tui Na (bodywork) or other rehabilitative treatment depending on their condition. Like in the outpatient department downstairs, there is a lot of heavy stimulation including through-and-through needling technique. Unlike the outpatient department, most people get somewhere between six and ten needles, not twenty or thirty as for facial paralysis. This, I suspect, is because the patients in an acute stage are needing to get over the worst of their symptoms (such as a reduced or lost gag reflex or profound hemiplegia), so it's not such a good idea to disperse their Qi quite so much.

It was a pretty quick two hours, no matter how you look at it.

Tomorrow promises to be interesting as well, as Dr Yang wants to demonstrate both 烧山火(Setting the Mountain on Fire) and 透天凉 (Penetrating Heaven Coolness) techniques, and maybe have us practice them on a patient. I still need to get the hang of needling without a guide tube, so I might try to find a way to practice that first.