I frequently see new patients in my clinic who I would describe as desperate. They may suffer from conditions such as back or neck pain, dizziness, headaches, depression, and even hot flashes. Many have been suffering for years, some for decades. Many are in unendurable pain.
What they have in common is that they feel they’ve exhausted all of their options for ever feeling better, and turn to acupuncture as a last resort. They have seen their general practitioner, specialists, and sometimes physical therapists. They have had tests, taken medications, switched medications, and tried surgery, sometimes more than once.
By the time we see a desperate person in our clinic they usually have been trying to find relief for a very long time. This is both good news and bad. The good news is that they are now open to the possibility that acupuncture can help them. The bad news is that they’ve waited a long time, making their condition harder to treat.
Unfortunately, some of these desperate people have one or two treatments and decide that acupuncture doesn’t work for the pain that they’ve had for the last twenty years. Others realize that they’ve had this pain or condition for a long time and understand that it will take some time for the acupuncture to work. They know that it took a long time for their condition to develop, and that it will take a long time for it to improve.
Occasionally, they will feel dramatically better in a treatment or two, but usually it takes a little longer. Those that stick with it recognize that acupuncture is a therapy and that it is stimulating their body to heal itself. This can take time, but it does work.
