acupuncture

A couple posts on a couple of blogs and acupuncture is on my mind.

Years ago, when Daughter was in eighth grade she developed a headache in April. And it never went away. It wasn’t a migraine, it was a tension headache. She attended school for a while with an ice pack at hand, She competed in our creative problem solving competition with her ice pack on her head except when she was on stage. Finally it got so bad she had to stop going to school. She couldn’t keep up with her work as she couldn’t read.

We started going to doctors. We looked at sinus, her braces, we looked for any unknown, exotic infectious disease; we went to Seattle to a pediatric neurologist, to an adult neurologist, to a chiropractor, a message therapist, her asthma and allergist specialist. She had catscans, MRIs, xrays, blood drawn, lots of scary tests.

Over the summer she got a bit better so she tried school, this time 9^th grade in high school and slowly got worse. She was back out of school again. I had numerous IEP meetings trying to get a tutor (the job I do now). She had to drop chemistry and german. She kept ice on her head 24/7 again and managed to do some reading for language arts. And she had already mastered algebra so we didn’t worry about that class. And we made more rounds of more doctors. Back and forth to Seattle (a four hour drive each way).

At Thanksgiving my niece, a registered nurse, was here. She worked with a Chinese American doctor and he suggested acupuncture for her sore neck. She tried it and thought it worked wonders. She suggested acupuncture for Daughter. Off we went. We had tried everything else. We were desperate.

Daughter went in for her acupuncture treatment on a Friday. She came home and she didn’t immediately go to the freezer for her ice pack. She went to bed without her ice pack. I was stunned. On Monday she went back to school.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. She continued treatments for all her high school years.

She has to watch her sleeping habits, avoid strong odors and watch her stress level. Looking back we think the headache started as a stress reaction and maturity has helped her deal with that. The creative problem solving team she was on had a very driven coach and the team was equally driven. I took over the team the next year, kept it low key and fun and kid managed and she had a blast and no headaches.

I really think acupuncture saved my daughter’s life and I am forever grateful to the wonderful woman who preformed it and my niece for suggesting it.