A question: if you are a five element acupuncturist and a
patient comes to you with the following medical history, how would you start
your treatment, particularly if the timescale is very short? My patient was only in this country for a
further week, was then flying to France
for two more weeks, followed by another stay of a few weeks in London before finally
returning to her home country at the other end of the world, with no five
element acupuncturist within living distance.
Here first is my patient’s
medical history, which she has given me permission to write about. She is a 70 year old
woman, who had breast cancer 20 years ago, and had her left breast
removed. She refused to have chemo- or
radiotherapy at the time, but has done other kinds of more natural treatments
which she feels have helped her. She developed
cancer of the uterus and stomach about 10 years ago, had a full hysterectomy
and was given 6 months to live.
Her most severe current problem is
a blocked artery under the left arm. She
has been told that she is now at very high risk of a stroke. Her left arm swells up badly very frequently. She also has very
severe constipation, vertigo and panic attacks.
What do we do if we only have
such a short time in which to treat? We
all learnt as students that we should gradually build up our patients’ energy by
slow and steady treatment on what we have diagnosed as the guardian
element. That means an average of about
6 – 10 weekly treatments to start with.
This gives us time not only to get to know the patient but to assess whether
the element we have chosen to treat is effecting the required level of change
which confirms our diagnosis. Should we
then accept to help a patient when we have only a much reduced timescale to
work with?
This is a dilemma which many of
us have to learn to face, particularly in such a
frenzied world where our patients are often away on business flying from
country to country. There will be many
other reasons, too, why patients are unable to grant themselves the luxury of
having the regular treatments needed. So
what do we do? The simplest thing for me
might have been to say I could not help the
patient because there was not enough time to treat her properly. Experience has however taught me how
effective a simple AE drain can be, even if there is little time to do much more. Often I have found a surprising improvement
in pulse qualities after removing the AE needles, even when I have found no AE.
I see this as the elements giving a sigh of relief at being addressed, as
though they know that help is on its way.
This was true for this particular
patient, too. She had no AE, somewhat
surprisingly I felt after all the major surgical procedures she had undergone,
but her pulses changed quite dramatically.
From feeling very uneven and jerky to me, they stabilized themselves
before I did any other treatment.
If there is nobody apart
from us who can offer the five element treatment which a patient asks us for,
and that patient is in great need of help, as my patient is, then I think we
have to tell ourselves that surely some treatment, however little, is better
than none. We have to be brave enough,
as well, to adapt our treatment protocols which we learnt as students, and do
whatever we think it is safe to do in the little time granted to us. In other words, we have to take some short-cuts,
something that is only advisable in these kind of cases. This has to be done on the understanding that
we must not be lulled into introducing similar short-cuts into our everyday
practice, a temptation we might feel because we may think that we can speed up
treatment in this way. All of us in the world today, patients and
practitioners alike, are always in a hurry and like to cut corners unless we
take care not to.
Treatment given:
I am listing the following treatments
with the above strict proviso. These are
the two treatments I was able to give my patient before she left London yesterday (all
points with moxibustion and all tonified, except, of course, the AE needles). She did not want me to needle her on her left arm, so all points on the arm were only needled on the right side.
Based on meeting her socially on
a few occasions before she came for treatment, my diagnosis was that she was Outer
Fire (Heart Protector and Three Heater).
Treatment 1: Checked for IDs. No treatment for this needed
Checked for AE: None
IV (Ki) 24 (I would not normally do this point at the first treatment, but she had gone through so much over the years, that I thought she needed this kind of spiritual resurrection which the point offers)
VI (TH) 4, V
(HP) 7: Source points, with moxa. (We
were told by JR Worsley that we could use moxa on these points only after 2
years in practice. He said that novice acupuncturists have a tendency to leave
the moxa burning for too long on the cones, which is dangerous over an artery)
Treatment 2: Patient told me that she had felt very good
indeed on the day of the treatment, and had had a surprising amount of energy
the next day.
No blocks found (no H/W, no E/E blocks)
III (Bl) 38 (43): A point which reaches every cell in the body
III (Bl) 22,
14 (Normally we would wait a little longer to needle the AEPs (back shu
points), and simply do III 38 at this treatment)
VI (TH) 3 (tonification point)
* Patient suddenly said that she was experiencing one of her panic
attacks, and had to rush off to
open her bowels. I talked gently to her to calm her down, and asked what she
felt she was most frightened of. She
said that it was fearing that her partner might die before she did. She had witnessed the death of a close member
of the family at first-hand a few years earlier, and could not forget the
trauma of this.
I then needled I (Ht) 7 as a
first-aid point, to help calm the Heart.
She recovered quickly and was happy for me to continue treatment. I finished by needling the remaining
tonification point on the Heart Protector:
V (HP) 9
She looked very peaceful as she
left, and phoned me the next day before going to the airport. She had slept for a full 10 hours after the
treatment, and felt totally refreshed.
Treatment 3 will be in a few
weeks’ time. My suggestions to myself
for the next treatment are:
Checking for
blocks (of course!)
CV 8 or 14 (CV
14 addresses greater deficiency of the spirit than does CV 8. Which point I choose will depend on how she
is when I see her next)
VI (TH) 6, V
(HP) 8 (horary points at horary time), or if that time is not possible, then:
VI (TH) 10, V
(HP) 7. I always remember JR saying that
VI 10 Heavenly Well is a “much under-used point”, which is why I like to use it. And which Fire person would not like to take
a dip in a Heavenly Well?
I think this
sequence of two treatments is a good example of my dictum: “The simpler the better”. Just because somebody has been very ill, and
even now is not out of danger does not mean that we should forget the basic
rule of our practice, which is to do as little as possible, and give the
elements the chance to do their work without too much interference from us.
(With apologies for the formatting errors in this blog. My computer seems to have developed a mind of its own, and I don't want to waste any more time trying to correct things.)
