Week 51: VooDoo Doll

The problem with western medicine is it focuses only on the illness. As soon as the medicine is gone, the problem usually returns. More often than not, the illness comes back even stronger than the previous time. I don’t want to mask my illness, I want to conquer them.

That said, I’ve decided to turn to oriental medicine, which focuses on the cause of the illness, the equilibrium of the whole body and weakened immune system. After nearly one year in Korea, hundreds of pills, many doctors visits later and no sign of improvement, I’ve found an oriental medicine doctor who has really keened in on my body and is positive on improvement in my health.

The diagnosis? Something along the lines of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (I also gave a self-diagnosis of this some time back, but never by the Dr.). My body is very weak, I am exerting a lot of energy but my body is not able to reproduce that energy, due to my bodies inability to sleep deeply, restfully, and for long periods of time. Thus, my body does not have the energy resources to fight off the many pollutants, bacterias, and virus’ that come my way (**reminder**: I live in one of the biggest [polluted] cities in the world, in a country where people don’t cover their mouths when sneezing, and few people honestly wash their hands (and even less use soap), and I work with classrooms full of small children all day). Rx: My body is weak, tired, and sick.

The treatment: vertical: Acupuncture 2x/week for a month ($20USD/visit) and horizontal: oriental medicine to be taken 2x/day for 3 weeks ($200USD/42 medicine packets). The two treatments combined form a cross and network together for some good ol’ (expensive!) natural healing.

Each treatment (thus far) consists of 22 acupuncture (needle) points.(and that’s a SPORTS bra so dont even start trippin’ on me)

While the Dr. is extracting the needles (you can still see some sticking out of my feet)