Happy holidays everybody!!!

Before I forget, A couple of weeks ago I wrote a very lengthy blog on a TV show called "Friday Night Lights" and why you should watch it. I still stand by my claim and think it's the best show on TV. Now I know some of you out there maybe busy with work and family and I understand that. ButI still urge you to check out that show. The other day I was perusing through the world wide web and I found this great site that lets you watch your favorite TV shows for free. It's a great site that lets you watch the current or previous seasons of your favorite TV shows. The website is casttv.com. It's a safe site but I still encourage you to put up your "pop up" blockers just in case. Alright that was my gift to y'all....

With the holidays coming soon, I am stuck. Not on what to get people for gifts. Oh no, that would be a very typical dilemma. No this time the problem lies in what I want for Christmas. See, I am a very uncomplicated person. Rather than have my wife guess what I want for a present, I usually tell her what I want. This goes both ways. I hate to guess and worry if I got my wife a gift she would enjoy. I pretty much ask her to tell me and that takes care of that. Very simple, everyone gets what they wanted and end of the story. So this year, for the life of me, I really do not know what I want. I really took some time to think about this one day and really, I just drew a big old blank. Just me staring at the wall, blinking on occassion to just moisturize my eyeballs. I even started to freewrite and see what gifts would come up. The result: nothing! Nada! Zippo!

The thing with me and Christmas gifts is this: Why should I receive something from someone else when I can go purchase it myself. When I was a child, I would write a lengthy list of the itmes I wanted, either sent it to Santa or gave to my parents, wait until Christmas day and voila!
I got my gift. The only reason why I did that was because I had no money. Now I am in my mid 30's, greying at my temples, have a career, a family and a mortage. If I wanted to get something, I would just go out and purchase it. Need a new laptop? Check, I'll got to BJ's and get one. Need the latest video game? Done, just ordered it on Amazon. Need a new book on acupuncture? Did it already on Amazon. Yes, yes I know the whole argument about me being surprised and all but really if you think about it, is it really that good to be surprised? I equate being surprised to be being frightened and shocked and those words usually go with Halloween and not on our Christ savior's birthday.

So this is the quandary I am at now. I really do not know what I need. I feel like I have everything I wanted and don't need another material possesion to make me feel good about myself. I explained this to my wife and she just gave me a stare of "You have got to be kidding me!!! You can't think of one thing?!" kind of look. Now when she gives me that stare, I, too, take a step away from myself and look at the predictament I am in and just shake my head in disbelief and utter disappointment. Sad, sad, sad....

Now for a patient story. This patient will always remain in my memories because it really is one of those "WTF?!" moments. For those who do not know what "WTF?!" means, it's "What the F#@$^%?!" Still having trouble with the "F" part? Ok then...It's a four letter profanity word that begins with the letter "F" and rhymes with "firetruck". Got it? Good. On we go...

It was during my intern years at acupuncture school and it was around Christmas time. Myself and another intern, who happened to be a good friend of mine, were called to see a patient. We walk into the room and see two lovely ladies with tattoos on their arms. When I mean "lovely", I mean they were gorgeous except for the whole tattoo part because that is not my thing. Anyway, they greeted us and my friend and I just stared at each other, thinking "This is gonna be a good day!" We start doing the intake and it turns out that one of them had some minor abdominal pain. Nothing too serious, no big deal. My friend leaves the room to get out supervisor (We were both at the level 2 internship), leaving me alone in the room.

Our fearless supervisor comes in, takes a look at the chart and talks with the patients. I do not remember what they were talking about because I was too busy staring at these lovely ladies (hey I am a guy full of testosterone!) He asks one of the ladies to lie on the bed and begins to needles them. When the first needle was inserted, the patient let out a big loud moan. The kind of moan you associate when two people are engaged in....how you say....sexual engagement. I thought that was strange and thought nothing of it. The second needle was inserted and there was that moan again except it was louder than the first one. Huh? Was it that painful or pleasurable? The third one was inserted and, you guessed it! The moan but now nearing the decibels similar to a jumbo jet flying over your roof. I immediately looked at my friend and he looks at me and we had this telekinetic thing going where we said "What the F@$%##?! What the hell is going on here?!"

After the needles were inserted, we leave the room and I had to ask my supervisor about what just transpired. I simply asked him, "Dr. So & So (real name is changed), is this a normal reaction you get from patients?"

"John, people react differently to needles."

"Ok I get that. But moaning like that? Do you have some special touch we should know about?"

"Grow up would you! People react differently to pain and you should know that if you are going to be a good doctor!" he said angrily.

Well then. So the patients leave. Around that time I went home for a week to spend the holiday season and came back really not thinking about the incident too much. When I returned to the clinic, the very same friend and I were sitting around talking and he brings this up:

"Hey, you remember those two girls with the tattoos?"

"You mean the moaners? Why did they want more of Dr. So & So's special treatments?"

"Dude they came back last week and it was really, really weird..."

"Like how weird? Did Dr. So & So give them his phone number for a "special treatment" at the Motel 6?"

"No, they came in, the both of them and they had this magazine. I did the intake and peered at what magazine they were reading. You wouldn't guess what they had."

"What a porn? Like Playgirl or something?"

"No, no but close. They had an S&M magazine! They're into that kind of weird sh#@$t!"

For those of you who do not know what "S&M" is, it's sado-mascochism. To put it simply, people who are into that kind of stuff get a sexual arousal or pleasure from pain.

"Shut up!" I said.

"No seriously! She had a S&M magazine."

"Ok so what happened?!"

"I had mentioned to the girls that they had an interesting magazine on their hands and they responded that it was their hobby..."

"You actually asked them that and that's how they responded? Casually just like that?"

"Yessir, just like that. Then I went to get Dr. S0 & So and told him about this and he just got pissed!"

"Really? Why?"

"Who knows but he goes into the room and asks the ladies straight- up about their reasons. They pretty much said that they got pleasure from the needles."

"You don't say..."

"He told them that the needles might not be the best type of treatment for them and just prescribed them herbs."

We all had a good laugh about that one. As you can guess, we never saw those patients again. As for Dr. So & So, he was cool and my relationship with him got better. The moral of the story is....well I really don't know what the moral is other than that it was a good story to tell. Seasons Greetings everyone!

Patient experiences

Since somebody requested it, I will tell you two stories from my experience in treating patients. The first one began way back in the winter of 2000. I had graduated from my school, finally received my license to practice in the state of California and was just ready to join the workforce. Ideally, I would have liked to a job set up when I received my license but that was not the case. Instead, after looking through many “Want Ads” and interviewing with various facilities, I was fortunate enough to find an outpatient physical therapy company in the greater Los Angeles area. The interviewer was nice (in fact, she was the vice president of the whole operation and we are still friends to this day) and I had just gotten my first “real” job as an adult.

I would begin the following week. I was ready to treat patients and was just “buzzing” with anticipation to really make a difference in someone’s life. The moment of truth came and I was off to my first job. Now since they had just incorporated acupuncture as part of a treatment option, I did not have many patients to start out with. In fact I think that first day I had three total. Still, I saw it as a first step and was just excited that I had gotten a job which I spent numerous hours studying and practicing as an intern. Went into the office I was assigned, was greeted by the staff, and was just getting myself familiar with my surroundings. It turns out my first patient was already at the office waiting for me.

Let me give you a brief illustration about acupuncture training at a school. You are pretty much supervised the whole time. They go by four stages. The first stage, you don’t do much other than observe what the supervisor and the senior interns do. You literally sit there and watch and help out with the cleaning. The second stage, depending on your instructor, is where you do the intake on a returning patient and discuss the treatment options with the supervisor. At times, this can get boring but this where you pretty much try to apply what you have learned in the classroom into the clinical setting. The third stage is that you are in charge of every aspect of the patient care except that when you are needling the patient, you have to follow exactly what the supervisor does. The final stage is pretty much you do what you want in treating the patient and the supervisor comes in an makes sure you did everything right. Notice the theme of having a supervisor there all the time to check your work or just act as a safety blanket.

Well the first professional patient of my career was a burly gentleman with a neck and low back pain. The man was in his 40’s and was a very large man who was a big rig driver. He, though, was very soft spoken and polite despite his appearances. So I do my thorough intake and even devised a treatment plan that was suitable for this gentleman. I was ready to become a licensed acupuncturist.

I placed the first needle in his hand and what happens? The guy lets out a whimper. Seriously. This big man who could probably crush me with his bare hands, let’s out a whimper. I finish putting all the needles in (total of 8) and within 5 minutes, the patient asks me to come into the room again. I ask what was going on and he tells me, in a voice where he sounded like he was whimpering again, that he was getting nauseous and getting dizzy. These are common symptoms of what happened when someone who does not eat breakfast or any meal and decides to get a treatment (acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy, massage, etc…) So I asked him if he ate anything and his response was a “no”. I immediately took out the needles and gave him some warm water and a piece of candy to get his body normalized (very common procedure). While this is happening, my first thoughts that came to my head were “Oh Sh#@$!!! Why me?! Please don’t let this guy pass out and have an ambulance come to pick him up?!”

After a while, he was fine and able to go home on his own. What did I learn from this ordeal? No matter how much you think you are ready, you are never ready. Sadly, that was the last time I ever saw the patient. Do I blame myself for losing the patient? No, because I did everything correctly from what I have learned and was trained for. I took the proper steps and even did the correct protocol in dealing with patient. You win some, you lose some…

Another patient story I have to tell you about is to illustrate how the mind can affect the body, whether it be negatively or positively. First, let me explain a disorder called fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia, in a nutshell, is total soreness or pain in the body. There really is no reason why it happens and even the medical doctors diagnose it as an “unknown etiology” which means they don’t know why it happens. Most doctors think it’s a psychogenic disorder where the problem comes from the person’s mind and manifests into the body. All I know is that it exists. The common symptoms are just a general soreness all over the body. It’s usually diagnosed when practitioner touches specific areas of the body in a sequence and, if it illicit pain, then you have fibromyalgia. Also, there is a theory that states it could be an excessive amount of lactic acid (the reason why your muscles feel sore after a workout) build up of the body that can come from diet.

So I had two patients who had this disorder. Let’s play a game. I will describe two patients with this disorder and you, the audience, try and guess who had a better prognosis. Ready? Here’s patient number one:

A female of 37 years old complains of having soreness all over her body especially in her hips, buttocks and neck regions. She has been diagnosed with having fibromyalgia by her MD for the past three years. She has been taking many prescription drugs such as vicodin, celebrex, ambien, naprosyn, and prevacid. She is a divorced mother of three. Physically, she looked fit and healthy for a woman of her age. She states that she eats properly and has no other medical conditions. When I initially spoke to her, she was very positive in her out look of “beating this disorder” and was excited to have her treatments done. She has been receiving other therapies such as massage and physical therapy and will now add acupuncture into her treatment plan. She has also has been attending a weekly support group meetings on fibromyalgia. When asked to rate her pain on a daily basis from 0 to 10 (zero being no pain and 10 being so much pain she has to go to the emergency room), she rates her pain at a 9.

Ok for patient number 2:

A female of 67 years old complains of having soreness all over her body especially in her hips, buttocks and neck regions. She has been diagnosed with having fibromyalgia by her MD for the past seven years. She has been taking many prescription drugs such as vicodin, celebrex, ambien, naprosyn, prevacid and vitamin supplements. She is a retired grandmother who lives with her husband. Physically, she looked fit and healthy for a woman of her age. She states that she eats properly and has had a history of having high blood pressure and two surgeries (one for fibroid removal in her ovaries and a herniated disk in her low back). When I initially spoke to her, she was very polite but neutral in her outlook of how acupuncture would help her. She has been receiving other therapies such as massage and physical therapy and will now add acupuncture into her treatment plan. She has also has been attending a weekly support group meetings on fibromyalgia. When asked to rate her pain on a daily basis from 0 to 10 (zero being no pain and 10 being so much pain she has to go to the emergency room), she rates her pain at a 9.

So can you guess from the information I have provided who actually did better with the treatments? If you guessed the first person, you would be incorrect. It turned out to be the second one. Here is a brief breakdown of why.

Patient one, while initially positive in her outlook, was a very non- compliant patient. She rarely attended her appointments and, when she did make it, she was always late. Late, as in she would come in 10 minutes before we were closing. You may think “ok maybe she’s working” but the truth was that she was unemployed. “Ok she has three kids and they take most of her time.” Well she has a hired nanny to watch them three kids. The thing that got me about her was this: She was so negative. Negative about her life, her kids’ lives, her current situation and all. She would constantly tell me that she was “going to beat this disease!” but, deep down, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I even suggested to her that she go and meet some of her friends and just take it easy or go to the park with her children on the weekends just to relax. Her response was that she had no friends she can trust and that her children stress her out more than her condition. Ooookkkaaaayyy then…. Every time she came into the office, it was complaint of some sort about her life, her condition, her future. Even I was getting depressed just listening to her half the time. Also, when asked about her pain rate from the 0 to 10 scale on every one of her visits, it was always a 9. No changes whatsoever.

Patient two was, at first, let’s say a tough nut to crack. She thought what I was doing was not going to work. Well after the first treatment, she became a believer and was doing quite well. She came to all of her appointments and, after the first visit, she was actually a very pleasant person with a positive outlook on life. A very religious woman, she and her husband not only attend church but also participated in other church functions such as volunteering and singing in the choir. She also spends a good amount of time with her friends playing bridge every weekend. Every time she came into the clinic, she would often talk about many topics such as religion, what she did at church over the weekend, politics, cooking recipes and even boxing. She always had a smile on her face and was really one of those patients I enjoyed treating. Her pain scale at first was a 9 but after receiving 3 months of treatments for 3 times a week, her pain went down to a 4 where she states that her condition was tolerable.

So what’s the whole point of this? For one, if you are pleasant with your practitioner, they will be pleasant to with your treatment. Give us a reason why we want to help you. Don’t come in and complain all the time. We, too, are people and hate to listen to why your life is miserable. We know that and we’re doing our best to help you. Put it this way, I have to listen to "X" amount of people complain all day about their bodies and their lives. What makes your story so special that I will do something miraculous? Come in with a positive attitude and I will feed off that energy and make your treatment experience a positive one too. The second point is that while you may have physical symptoms of pain, the best thing to help alleviate that isn’t a magic drug. It’s having a positive, stress free mind. You will be surprised by what the mind can do. In Chinese medicine they say the governor of the whole body is…you guessed it! The mind. The mind will control the body. Having stress in your mind will cause your body a lot of unnecessary burden. Where do you think the phrase "He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders.." comes from? Stress can make you not only crazy but it will show up om the body as well. They usually appear around the neck and shoulder ares.

Keep in mind that to be healthy all around, it begins with your head. Get your head right and everything else will follow.

Tiger, Viruses and Bruce Lee...Oh My!

What’s with this Tiger Woods story? Is it really a surprise that he actually cheated on his wife? C’mon let’s not be totally naïve about this and think that Tiger was an innocent and pure soul. Think about any person in high profile or celebrity role. No matter how they appear, you know it’s not the whole truth. When I found about the news that Tiger Woods crashed his car near his driveway and heard that his beautiful wife had to use a golf club to get him out, my initial thoughts were this (this is the actual, God’s honest truth where my wife can verify) “Boy he must have cheated on his wife and his wife was using the golf club to beat him up!” Think about this: How many people in this world actually have a golf club nearby so they can break car windows? That’s the first thing that came to mind as well. Was there a golf club lying around the driveway on the Wood’s family property like most of us have rakes on ours? You can argue that since he is a professional golfer that he would leave his golf clubs around the house. I would counter that and say I am an acupuncturist and I know I do not leave needles around my house for my wife to poke me with. Let’s face it, any high profile athlete like Tiger is bound have a “cheatin’ heart”. No matter how good his public image may be, history has shown that many athletes especially if they are portrayed “too good to be true” will always have a some sort of infidelity in their lives. I will name you some athletes who have very positive public images but were caught cheating. Ready? Here is a brief sampling:

-Michael Jordan

- Kobe Bryant

- Dale Earnhardt

-Muhammed Ali

- Patrick Ewing

-Martin Brodeur

-Shaquille O’neal

- David Beckham

- Alex Rodriguez

-Roger Clemens

- Chris Everett Lloyd

- Greg Norman

- Magic Johnson

Those are just some of the samplings. I think there should be a scientific equation to detect if a sports star is going to cheat. Sort of a probability equation if you will. If your sports image is too perfect, they are likely to cheat on their spouses. I am no mathematician and have no clue on how to devise such equation. Just remember, if the celebrity seems to be too good to be true, just know they will stray from their spouses or significant other.

This past week, my computer has been bugged. I opened up an email and, lo and behold, it was a virus. This caused such a headache. So much that I lost my patient files that I usually save on the computer. Thankfully I have hard copies of their paperwork and billing in their charts but the whole ordeal was a problem. To those who created these “Trojan horse” viruses, “What the f^%&$?! Why the hell are you guys doing such a sh#@@$$# thing!!!” Because of this, I was unable to attend my Wednesday night seminar because it took literally three hours to reboot my computer. Luckily, I was able to retrieve my school and some valuable documents but to lose the files on my work….Man don’t get me started. I am still fuming about that I lost over 150 patient files. 150 files!!! Do you know how many man hours was put in this!!! So last night was not a happy household at the Kim’s residence.

Now I would like to share a true story of how I met Bruce Lee’s brother. I used to live in the Los Angeles area and worked at an outpatient physical therapy clinic in El Monte, which is about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. I was employed as an acupuncturist and treating most orthopedic conditions. One of patients happened to be Robert Lee. He was a very soften spoken, mild mannered man who wore glasses and was slightly overweight. Robert and I got along great and I enjoyed having him as a patient.

One day of the front desk informs me that Robert was actually Bruce Lee’s brother. I guffawed at such notion and told her that it was an old Asian trick that he pulled. Any Asian person with a last name Lee always claim to have some sort of familial relations to the great Dragon (i.e. “Yeah Bruce Lee is my unlce” or “I’m Bruce Lee’s third cousin removed and remarried and adopted nephew on his mother’s father’s side”). I was incredulous that the front desk girl actually fell for this old trick. Well Robert came in and I asked him “Hey Robert, why are tricking these ladies?” and the following exchange actually took place.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean by tricking?” said Robert.

“C’mon now. Why are you pulling the old ‘Bruce Lee’ is my relative routine?”

“Because he is my brother!”

“Get out of here! Look I’m Asian as well and know that routine since I was 5.”

“John, Bruce is my brother!”

“Ok, if you say so…”

“Next time I see you, I will prove to you that he is my real brother!”

“Please do…”

As you can tell, I was very dubious about Robert’s claims. The next time I came into the office, Robert was there with a bunch of photo albums and other items with Bruce Lee on it. Time for me to eat my own foot…

I looked at the photo album of Robert’s and, lo and behold, there was a family picture of him and his brother. There was another picture of them as kids as the “Immortal” Bruce Lee was holding his infant brother. There was another one where Robert and his brother stood side to side, smiling endlessly like any family members would do when they love each other. And there was another where Robert is just standing still and we see Bruce doing a flying kick over his head. Robert even brought an old album that he recorded with his brother’s help which was a folk song album titled “What Kung Fu means to me”. On the album cover, there was Bruce Lee in his menacing pose ready to beat the living tar out of someone while Robert was in the background smiling peacefully.

“Hey look Robert. I apologize to you if I ever doubted or offend you in any way.”

“It’s ok, John. I never lie about my family.”

We talked a while about his brother. I was and am still a huge fan of Bruce Lee for many reasons. The obvious was that he was a small guy who just whupped anyone that messed with him. The other and more importantly, was that he was actually the first person to make Asians and Asian culture to be seen as cool. Prior to that, Asians were portrayed negatively on film and in print. It didn’t help that with World War 2 and the Vietnam War, the portrayal of Asians, in general, were downright racially offensive. I looked back on those images of Asians and it made me angry as a young man. Then in came Bruce Lee. Not only was he a good looking guy but this guy with all of his flying kicks, fast punches and the use of nunchucks would beat any man down who crossed him. He wasn’t the biggest man in the fight but he was the toughest and would let his opponents know firsthand. Because of his visibility, he made Asian culture to be cool. Many wanted to learn his fighting methods and were influenced by the beauty of the culture as well. I really admired him for that.

After talking to Robert for a while about his brother, I learned a lot about my idol. Here are some facts:

- Bruce, as a young man, was a wild child. So bad that his father actually made him learn Kung Fu to be disciplined. It didn’t work because he got into more fights. His father, tired of his actions, sent him away to America on his own at age 17. This is like a very extreme version of “I kicking you out of my house” but only move across the Pacific Ocean.

- Bruce, prior to being a movie star, struggled a lot and led a tough life alone in America. He did receive a college degree in University of Washington but he literally paid for his education working at various jobs as a waiter to even a Chinese food delivery person.

- Bruce was the only one of siblings who actually fought. The rest pretty much did other things. Robert was into music and said that “I am a lover, not a fighter like Bruce.”

- Guess who holds the entire fortune to the Bruce Lee estate? His widowed wife and daughter. How much did Bruce Lee’s actual family received? None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Plus, his wife Linda, has pretty much distanced herself from rest of his immediate family.

- Here’s a surprise. Guess who meets with Robert on a monthly basis to have lunch. The mistress that was with Bruce when he was found dead. They meet every month for lunch and pretty much talk about Bruce and his life.

- One of the hardest thing for Robert to deal with was not the death of his brother. He kind of knew that something bad would happen with him (he was one of the pall bearers for who carried his coffin). The toughest thing he had to deal with was the death of his nephew, Brandon Lee. He said that he knew him ever since he was a baby and he always loved him even though he did not get to see him much. Still, Robert never saw him as a Bruce Lee’s son. He just saw him as the little nephew that he always knew and loved.

Well that was my brush with a legend in an obtuse way. One more thing I want to mention before I end this. Since we have like 3 units left, do any of you guys want to hear about some of the patients I have treated in the past? I will not be using any real names. I have been doing what I have been doing for the past 10 years and I have encountered a lot of wacky situations. Let me know and please comment on it…