Acupuncture points on the foot. Kind of cool! Photo by Maksim Goncharenok at pexels.com.
And it’s not because the needles hurt, because they didn’t. Really!
I had an acupuncture appointment this week at a local acupuncture clinic. It’s something I’ve been wanting to try for some time.
It wasn’t my first acupuncture treatment ever. My first session was about 24 years ago when I was pregnant with my first baby. I was getting past my due date, and nothing appeared to be happening, so the chiropractor I worked for gifted me a session in hopes that it would speed things along. Hard to say if it worked. Eventually, thankfully, our daughter was born. But it was a long, painful labor process that encompassed not one, not two, but three nursing shift changes. I was admitted early in the morning one day and she was born the next day around 2:00 am. On the other hand, the entire process might have been worse if I hadn’t had that acupuncture session. Maybe it would have taken another entire day before she was born!
My second acupuncture treatment was a few years ago at a clinic that sounded great, but that ended up leaving me disappointed because they initially told me that they took my insurance, but actually, sorry, no, in the end, they didn’t. The practitioner who did my treatment was covered at his other office, but not where I went. So that was a lot of money for an initial consultation, and I wasn’t able to continue working with him.
My session this week was different. It was something. To my (sort of) surprise, because I was hopeful but also a little skeptical, something happened.
As the doctor put the first needles in, I started crying.
Not because it was painful, because it wasn’t. Really! There was something happening, though, something emotional in me that wanted to release. Let’s just say this was unexpected. The doctor commented, “It happens all the time,” and told me not to worry. She handed me tissues; I was careful to grab them with the hand that didn’t have needles in it.
It’s a community clinic with recliners spaced a comfortable distance apart. There were other folks in the treatment room, one woman snoring daintily. I was encouraged to stay for as long as I wanted, which was different from the last place I went to, where I was ushered in, treated, billed, and escorted out in a relatively short time. At this clinic, if you need to leave at a certain time, they will come and get you. But otherwise, if you don’t have to be anywhere? They encourage you to stay as long as you like. Some people stay for hours. They don’t take insurance, but they have a sliding fee scale, so you pay what you can.
I was a little anxious about this. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be, but did I really want to stay for an indefinite time period? What if I lost all track of time? Before my treatment, as the doctor was explaining the process, I suggested that I probably didn’t want to stay for more than an hour. I mean, that would be plenty of time, right?
She gently suggested that I should relax and see what happens, that I didn’t need to limit myself.
To my surprise, I was there for an hour and a half.
Here is what I know for sure: I was ravenously hungry after the session, even though I had eaten a good breakfast that morning.
