The Yin and the Yang of a Blog

Recently I was perusing other blogs to see what people had to say about acupuncture. I came across an account of one woman’s unhappy experience with her acupuncturist. I wish I had bothered to bookmark the page to link as a reference but I forgot to so you are stuck with my recollection of the event. Anyway the blogger was upset because she felt that the acupuncturist was making unreasonable demands of her to change her lifestyle. She was angered by the enormity of the things requested and felt they were impossible to achieve.

At first glance I was completely on the side of the patient however upon re-reading the blog I started to understand that there truly were two valid sides to the story. The patient had a complicated medical history and was trying to get pregnant. She had limited funds and could only allocate enough money for a few treatments.

As a practitioner this very situation has happened to me. I’ve been aware that in order to try to achieve their dreams of becoming pregnant the patient may have to make extreme lifestyle changes. These include dietary, exercise, sleep and possibly work habits. These are hard things to ask of a person and I like to try to start small so as not to overwhelm a person. The thing is if you only have a few weeks to help a person than it’s impossible to start small.

Unfortunately this is often confusing to the patient as they usually have no background in the theory of acupuncture and therefore have no idea why you are asking such difficult things of them. Explaining your reasoning is always a good idea however sometimes it just comes down to the fact that they have to trust in you and believe that you are trying to help them.

Given that I didn’t bookmark the blog I have no idea how the situation turned out. My only hope is that the two people involved were able to see where the other was coming from. If that is the case than they both have a better chance of achieving their goals.

One Acupuncturist Does Not a Field Make

Periodically I get to leave my office and get out and socialize. During these rare instances it often comes up what I do for a living. Occasionally somebody will say to me “I tried acupuncture once but it didn’t work”. When asked if they tried switching to a different acupuncturist the answer is usually no.

This has always struck me as funny. Usually my response is “Well if you went to your doctor and weren’t satisfied would you declare that western medicine didn’t work or would you switch doctors”? I know this sounds a bit snitty but I don’t mean it to. The thought that one acupuncturist could represent an entire field is crazy to me.

An acupuncturist’s individual styles and personalities as well as varied levels of expertise and education all come into play. I can think of several patients who came to me dissatisfied with their former acupuncturist who then went on to become some of my greatest sources of referrals. Likewise I’ve referred people out of my practice knowing that I could find them a better fit elsewhere.

I guess the moral of this story is if you’ve tried acupuncture once before and weren’t thrilled with the results give the field another try. Hopefully you’ll be happy that you did.