Tales From the Practise of Medicine: Injury (I)

Another long day was finally over. When the last patients left, I shut the door behind them and longed to go home. Just then the telephone rang. I was reluctant to answer it and hesitated for a few seconds, but finally decided to pick it up. It was a Western medical doctor who needed my help. He had a patient who was suffering from acute abdominal pain and could not move. He wanted me to do him a favour, because he knew treating abdominal conditions was my speciality. I agreed to go straight over to his office and see what I could do.

When I arrived, the patient was groaning with pain and tightly gripping the armrest of a chair. Her name was Jenny. She could not move at all, and even the slightest change in position brought her enormous pain. I had seen conditions like this before in my traditional Chinese medical practise and knew immediately what to do. I took out a set of acupuncture needles and quickly acupunctured her Ren Zhong point (located between the nose and the mouth). Before she realised what was going on, the needle had already gone in about three centimetres. I asked her to breathe deeply, while I gently moved the needle in and out. One minute later, the pain had greatly subsided and she could stand upright. I asked her to walk a few steps with the needle in, and watched her face transform from pain to relief.

After removing the needle, I conducted a clinical evaluation. However, as I was about to examine her abdominal area, she started to scream. Her voice was so sharp that it was as if somebody had just stabbed her in the belly with a knife. When she saw my surprise and my hands suddenly stop in mid-air, she immediately apologised.

For the next few minutes, Jenny held my hand and cried softly. Based on my experience, I knew that both her body and soul must have experienced severe trauma to cause this much physical pain.

I told her gently, "Let me try to treat your abdominal pain, so you can have a good night sleep when you go back home." I then treated her.

Afterwards, when Jenny was getting ready to leave, she felt much better. She could sit, stand and walk whenever she wanted. She felt compelled to apologise to me again, and said, "I screamed at you like that…it was really…can I see you again?" "Sure,” I said.

Jenny's abdominal pain went away, but I knew she was going to come back soon for further treatment. A few days later, she returned and asked me to treat her epilepsy.

Over the next several months, she told me about some of her life experiences.

"I was born in the farm belt in the mid US with five siblings. My mom is an incompetent but kindhearted woman, and my stepfather is a drunkard. They married when I was five years old. From that point on, my childhood was a living hell. I was abused by my stepfather continuously until I was 14. One day I couldn’t take it anymore and ran away from home. I have not gone back since. Now, I have a family and two children of my own. I absolutely do not allow my stepfather to come anywhere near them.

I really hate myself. The abuse I experienced in my childhood left me hurt and confused. How could an adult have treated me like that? How could I have had such misfortune at such a young age? My self-hatred and rebellious attitude have lead me to be extremely conceited as well. I have lived between these two extremes, and my conceit on the surface is only to conceal my feeling of extreme inferiority inside. Life has been so awful to me...

I cannot understand why the human moral standards have deteriorated so much in today’s society. You see children being abused by adults everywhere, and sometimes children even fall victim to their own parents. On Sundays, people go to church and pray, but they pray for their own self-interest. The bad people have no conscience left at all in the bottom of their hearts, not to mention genuine repentance..."

As she was telling me this, she became more and more emotional. Her breath became sporadic and an epileptic attack suddenly came on. I treated her to stop the twitching. When the episode subsided less than a minute later, she told me that this was the shortest attack she ever had.

(To be continued...)