My grandfather was the local physician in my dad’s village in China, and he would often prescribe herbs and strange ointments for his patients. My dad staunchly advocated for those weird medicines, and would encourage me to take an assortment of herbal soup, pills, and even acupuncture whenever I was feeling the least bit sick. The prospect of having a bunch of small needles inserted into my body sent shivers down my spine, and I would adamantly refuse. After all, I was an American born Chinese teen.
During high school, I studied the wonders of biology, and became a Western scientific thinker. So many things that occurred in nature could be explained through the scientific approach. Because of this, I questioned the legitimacy of alternative Eastern medicine, especially since I had not been given a plausible explanation as to how acupuncture and massage worked. I thought, “We can prove that time dilation really happens, how the subatomic particles in an atomic bomb collide and fuse with each other to create an explosion, yet we can’t explain how acupuncture helps heal a typical twisted ankle? What a joke.”
Then, the inevitable happened. As a nationally ranked badminton player, I leaped into the air during a competition one day. As I slammed my racket downward in a sharp move, I suddenly felt a sharp pain exploding in my leg, and I fell onto one knee. I gently lowered myself onto the ground in an effort to reduce the pain. My leg throbbed with pain each time I tried to bend it, and I left the court to rest.
As I was sitting on the bench, caressing my poor leg, my mom came up and suggested that I get acupuncture. I looked at her as though she was ridiculous.
“You can’t be serious?” I sarcastically asked. “You know how much I hate alternative Chinese medicine.”
“You don’t know if it will help you or not until you try it. My friend had the same problem as you, and after getting acupuncture done on her leg, she felt fine after two days!” my mom exclaimed.
“That’s probably because of the placebo effect. It would’ve gotten better in two days by itself.”
“No,” my mom shot back. “It usually takes two weeks for leg cramps to get better. You’re going, and that’s that.”
As I entered the clinic, I looked around, attempting to find the source of the annoying odor that greeted me. I saw stacks upon stacks of ointments, herbs, teas, and other traditional medicines. There were teas for headaches, creams for acne removal, and all sorts of typical and unusual remedies. When I finally snapped out of my reverie, I noticed a short, Chinese woman, wearing a white coat that was dragging on the floor. She beckoned me to come with her into one of the exam rooms, and I begrudgingly followed her.
She instructed me to lay myself on the table as she prepared her needles. I was quite nervous, and I couldn’t get myself to stop shaking.
“Don’t worry,” she told me. “It doesn’t hurt at all. Here’s a paper towel so you can cover your head and not see the needles.”
I clamped the paper towel over my face, and braced myself for the inevitable pain. As she put the first needle into my leg, I felt the slightest prickle, nowhere near the gigantic amount of pain I was expecting. She put in another, and another, and in no time all the needles were inserted into my leg. She said, “All done! Wait here for 25 minutes,” and then shut the door behind her. As I lay there in the silence, all I could think about was the needles in my leg, but I decided to relax and somehow got through those few minutes.
After the time was up, she opened the door, quickly pulled out the needles, and told me that she would massage my leg a little. Surprisingly enough, the massage hurt more than the acupuncture, and after five relatively painless minutes, she clapped her hands together and ushered me out the door. I was shocked that I could actually move my leg without erupting a spike of pain up my leg, and I walked all over the clinic in order to make sure that I wasn’t cured prematurely. I saw my mom smirking at me from the corner of the room. “Told ya so,” she grinned.