Barffie The Whine Connoisseur

Well I guess we have backaches once in a while… you know, the long hours we spent sitting in front of the computer, the awful postures we adopt when we use the laptop on the bed and all…

All these contribute to damage points and they’ll eat away at your life bar, little by little… then before you know it, POW! You’ve hit the red zone and you’ve gotta stumble around and look for help.

Even more so when you are approaching the big Three-O.
Yes, like me.

So we went camping at Changi Beach Park with my family to celebrate my birthday a couple weeks ago… my niece got the nice air mattress (yes, she is somewhat spoilt, I know – even my mum got to sleep on the hard floor inside the tent) and the rest of us grappled with the hard ground that sleepless night.

But it’s alright, Jeffwee and I slept in the pavilion with the hard concrete floor lined with thin straw mats that night. It was chilly that night, but since everyone had great fun, it was fine. I even did “yin” yoga the next Sunday, but I could have aggravated the condition by doing that Pigeon Crescent pose…

Then the attacks of the backaches came.

I was almost sobbing by the time I took ten steps out of the bed that morning but I rested that weekend. 2 days later, the almost crippling pain went away, but the slight pinch at the base of the spine hung around.

Then Jeffwee had the most awful backache as well. Found some painkillers at home and they worked! Happy pills rescued him for a couple of days until his back got better that week.

Then it was the horrifying return of my backache. Last Sunday I drove around town for a couple of hours, running around a few places to pick up CWS donation tins from the various Strip outlets (btw, we raised about $815 of donations through these tins!!!)… and that night, the pain was back.

I had a couple of ok-notsook-ok-notsook days this work week. I doubled over in agony the whole morning at the office on Tuesday, but somehow I felt better in the afternoon. Yesterday was fine… the ache was still annoying me, but it was ok.

Then came this morning, and I felt downright crappy. I had problems getting out of bed so I decided that I’ve ought to get something done about this horrible backache that has been haunting us for weeks. (Us, because he had to do the weekly clean-up by himself… and yes, I was whining quite a bit, so yeah.)

I took MC from the GP downstairs and then headed off to the nearest Ma Kuang TCM clinic to try out acupuncture.

A few needles were inserted, then it was half an hour of warm heat and rhythmic pulsations through the needles at the affected area, and some painful glass jar “ba guan” treatment thingy later… A really nice smelling “ko yok” (medicated plaster) was pasted on by the gentle TCM lady… and it was done!

I was told, that sleeping on the concrete flooring that chilly night must have gotten some “moisture” and “wind” into my system, causing the backache. It was definitely not simple muscular pain as it “pinches” rather than being a dull ache that will go away with some massage.

She also gave me some Chinese medicine in powder form for my irregular periods (I have PCOS) and the mild cholesterol problem to slowly bring my health back to speed in the long run.

TCM is all about finding the root cause and to fix it slowly. The western GP simply prescribed more painkillers, which means that will mask the symptoms, but actually doing nothing to fix the real cause of the condition.

I felt almost instantly better! Suddenly, I felt like I could function again. Will be heading back on Sunday for another session.

Bliss.

So don’t be too quick to sweep off scary acupuncture or TCM as a possible course of treatment the next time you have a health condition. I am afraid of sinsehs, but I guess TCM practitioners should be ok. My TCM lady was really very soft-spoken and patient as well…

Heck, the other time I did TCM, the doctor also fixed my gastric problems with a single batch of medication! So there must be something right about this TCM thing, right?

Looks like I am turning into a convert