I was extremely lucky to get “the needle guy” that day
in 1995. During the following years, he helped to:
a) alleviate
my PMS. Acupuncture, however, wasn’t as effective as the B-compound vitamin
intra-muscular injections he dispensed—we referred to those visits as his civic
duty and the treatment as my anti-homicide shot;
b) manage
my allergies. Naturopaths test allergies via a machine that reads the body’s
energy fluctuation when a suspected allergen is brought into proximity. No cuts,
scrapes or scratches required. Just an ability to read my aura. (Early on in my
alternative medical journey, my wee sis began calling him my “voodoo doctor”
and it stuck);
c) deal
with a kidney stone. He sent me to Emergency when I called him at home one Sunday
night, in so much pain I could barely breathe. After x-rays and a shot of
Demerol, I was released on my own recognizance and went home to bed. I won’t
lie; I took the prescription pain killers when necessary because pain that
blows off the lid on a scale of ten demands immediate relief, but acupuncture
helped my system to rid itself of that pesky little nugget without resorting to
surgery;
d) cure a
back seizure that had me off work for six weeks in 2002. and
e) generally
kept me healthy with immunity booster shots, various supplements, and regular
acupuncture tune-ups.
When you’re cooped up in a room with someone for hours
at a time, you get to know them pretty well. We shared stories of family,
personal history, politics, religion, and philosophy. We talked cars, hockey
and chocolate. Books and music. Poetry and medicine. I could tell him anything,
knowing he would keep my confidence and maybe offer some useful advice. He was
a genuinely caring, compassionate, unconventionally conventional individual whose
primary mission in life was to help and heal others. I fondly referred to him
as a free radical. Bureaucracy drove him crazy, and it didn’t help that he was
smarter than the folks who raided his clinic in search of infractions. (They
never found anything.)
People drop in and out of your life as required. As I
was beginning to rethink my health strategy, circumstances conspired to part me
from my voodoo medicine man. Over the next few years, I began a program of
therapeutic massage coupled with chiropractic to keep me on my feet, but I
didn’t sign on with another naturopath. I didn’t want anyone else, so I
dawdled. And dawdled. And dawdled.
I occasionally wondered about my voodoo doctor, about
where he was and how he was doing. Ter and I would laugh about our history with
him, because some of the stories are hilariously funny but you really had to
have been there. Recently, “occasionally” thinking became “often”, and I found
myself at the sink one night, wondering aloud about what had happened to him.
Two days later, the phone rang and guess who it was? I
was so overjoyed that I shut my office door, propped my feet on the garbage
can, and raved at him for fifteen minutes. “Where have you been? How are
you? Oh, I’m so glad you called; Ter and I were just saying the other day …”
Turned out he had been thinking about me, too. “We’re
on the same psychic network,” he said, to which I replied, “Well, yeah!
Weren’t we always?” He learned that my life had done a complete one-eighty, I
learned that his had done pretty much the same thing, and here we are, come
full circle and reunited once more.
Part of me worries that he’s back for a reason, that
some sinister health issue only he can fix is lurking in my future. The greater
part is simply delighted at reconnecting with someone who means so much to me.
He’s been put to work on my trick ankle, trying to coax it toward “a new
normal” following an untreated incident from a zillion years ago, and so far,
we’ve caught up on family, politics, medical theory and the best cocoa content
in chocolate. Oh, yeah … and the ankle is coming along nicely.
Welcome back, Doc.
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