Last day of my Acupuncture rotation. Dr. Choi praised my rotation mate and me quite a bit, so I think we impressed her. She said we worked well as a team and, even when we didn’t know the answer to something, our though process to get to an answer was really good. Yesterday, after a conversation on spirituality, she said “I have the two most precious students in the whole school together on this rotation!” It was pretty sweet :) Plus, it feels pretty damn good to be complemented by someone whose intellect and kindness you admire.
She told us another amazing story today and, since I don’t know the details about the patient or the case, I think it’s safe for me to share it. It’s too cool not to. So, in Eastern Medicine, checking the pulse is an incredibly important step in diagnosis. This is not at all like the assessment of pulses in Western Medicine. In Eastern Medicine, pulses tell you information about what is imbalanced in the body (Qi, Yin, Yang…other stuff) and sometimes, what organs are affected. There are 28 different pulse types and they can integrate with one another. We became familiar with maybe 8 on this rotation and they gave us enough trouble. For example, you can have a wiry pulse where, when the pulse hits your fingers it feels sharp, like a guitar string under your fingers. It indicates pain in most instances and, when we were working with animals with painful conditions, like severe arthritis or intervertebral disk disk disease, we felt this pulse. Interestingly, the pulse is what changes first during treatment and if it changes in a positive way, it means your treatment is working. When working on these painful patients, we would periodically feel their pulses and they would be less obviously wiry. Then, later, we’d hear from the owners that they were moving around better, had more energy, etc. Pretty awesome. Anyway, there are 3 different types of pulses that are categorized as irregular: hurried, knotted, and intermittent. An intermittent pulse indicates that there is something going on with the heart, like an arrhythmia.
Several years ago, a dog with a spinal tumor was referred to Dr. C. It was really bad and the dog was given less than a few months to live because it was an aggressive tumor and in a bad location. With acupuncture and herbs, she treated this dog for over 3 years. During one of her visits with the dog, she was doing pulse diagnosis at the beginning of her exam. She felt that he had an intermittent pulse and sent him to the Cardiology department immediately. They did an echocardiogram and found that he had a pericardial effusion. They drained half a liter from it, which is HUGE considering this dog weighed maybe 20 pounds, if that. So, that’s the first amazing thing, that she could diagnose a heart problem just from taking a pulse. The 2nd amazing part of this story is that, later, the owners had an MRI done on the dog to try to see if they could find a potential cause of the pericardial effusion. They didn’t find anything in regards to the effusion but guess what they did find? The spinal tumor was completely gone.
I am just so amazed by that! And she has so many stories like this, stories that sound like she’s performing miracles. I think that she is a particularly good practitioner of Eastern Medicine but seriously, why aren’t we hearing more stories like this? Why hasn’t Eastern Medicine been more integrated into our Western Medicine? Yes, these are anecdotal stories, but there have been thousands of scientific studies performed in Asia showing the efficacy of Eastern Medicine on a variety of conditions. Why aren’t we translating them? Why aren’t we doing more studies on Eastern Medicine here? Is it really because no one will fund it because it isn’t something that someone will make money off of, unlike the endless drugs that we’re always testing, many of which have some pretty serious side effects? It’s frustrating because Eastern Medicine has so many positive effects and, if you’re a good doctor and know what you’re doing, not many negative ones. As someone who’s had cancer, I want to know why we’re not incorporating Eastern Medicine into cancer treatment? Why we’re letting people die of the disease, die horrible deaths, from the disease itself or the treatment, without a mention of Eastern Medicine, which is used in Asia in conjunction with chemotherapy and other Western treatments, and sometimes as sole treatment, to good effect. I mean, sure, you can seek it out independently, but it isn’t really part of the whole, typical, treatment discussion. It makes me angry, frustrated, and sad. I hope that this passion stays with me so I can find the energy to pursue a bit of an Eastern Medicine education later in life, so I can offer my future patients the best of both worlds.
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