“Yeah, you do. I’m pretty sure ‘oil’ is a verb in this case. You get cow milk by milking a cow, so you get snake oil by oiling a snake. This is all basic commonsense stuff.”
This was when Victor asked exactly what sort of herbal supplements I was taking, and insisted that I stop taking the ones that weren’t written in English or came in baggies from questionable health stores. He was right, but I was desperate, and it was that fit of desperation that led me to agree to let Victor take me to an acupuncturist.
I’d never gone to an acupuncturist before, but I’d heard enough about them to think that I knew what I was getting myself into. But it turns out that all the people who told me that acupuncture is awesome and doesn’t hurt at all are complete fucking liars. Or maybe my acupuncturist is just bad, or just really hates white people. Hard to tell.
Regardless, I think it behooves the world for me to tell you what really happens at an acupuncturist so that you won’t go in as blindly as I did:
1. The nurse will tell you to take off everything but your underwear. So maybe you should wear underwear. And maybe they should tell you that when you make the appointment.
2. Special note to people bringing their small children: What the hell is wrong with you? The “dollhouse” on the waiting room floor isn’t a dollhouse. It’s a shrine. If you let your son’s G.I. Joe “conquer it and claim it in the name of the United States,” you are probably going to go to hell. Also, maybe you shouldn’t piss off the guy who’s about to stab needles into you. Just a suggestion, lady.
3. The acupuncturist will come in and you’ll try to explain what hurts, and then he’ll shake his head, because he doesn’t speak English. He’ll call in his nurse and you’ll explain about where your rheumatism is, and how long it’s hurt, and what drugs you’re on, and she’ll look at the doctor and yell, “SHE SAYS SHE HURT,” and then walk out of the room. Then the doctor will give you a look like “Why are you wasting my time? Of course you hurt. Why would perfectly normal people come to have needles stuck in them?” Then he’ll make you lie back on the table and start jabbing needles into you.
4. The needles are small and won’t hurt at all. In fact, they’ll feel good. Ha, ha! Just kidding. They feel like needles. Because they are.
5. The doctor will stick one needle into your ear and it will start bleeding. You will be bleeding from your ear. I can’t even stress this enough. BLEEDING FROM THE EAR. Then he’ll open an English book about acupuncture and make you read a paragraph about how the ear is the shape of an upside-down fetus and so it’s good to stick needles in it. I desperately hope that paragraph has lost something in translation, because I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to stab needles in fetuses. I make a mental note to ask my gynecologist. Then I make a mental note not to, because even if I can manage to describe this properly, asking my gynecologist whether it’s okay to stick needles in fetuses is just going to make the next Pap smear more awkward.
6. Forty-four needles later. Several of them are bleeding. The other ones actually start to feel a little tingly. The doctor will leave and you’ll try to look down at yourself, but you can’t because it’s making the needles in your neck stick farther into you. At this point you will pass out from shock. Then the acupuncturist will come back in and smugly claim you fell asleep from all the chi. I agree, if chi is Chinese for “massive blood loss.”
7. The forty-four needles all come out. You start to leave and the doctor laughs and tells you he’s just begun, and that now he has to do “your butt side.” Then you say, “My butt side?” and he’s all, “No. Your butt side.” Then the nurse yells, “YOUR BACKSIDE,” from out in the hall, and he’s all, “Yes. Your butt side.” Awesome.
8. Forty-two more needles. All in my butt side. Two hurt like hell and are bleeding a lot. You start to suspect that the acupuncturist is just mad at you. You try to explain that you were not with the woman in the lobby who let her kid’s action figures commandeer his shrine. He totally does not believe you.
9. Forty-two needles all come out. Then he pours some sort of liquid on you that I’ve decided to call “stink juice.” And he kneads it into your pores, so that you smell like a dirty old sock that someone has been storing patchouli and VapoRub in.
10. Then you hear the sound of a lighter, and you suspect that you’re about to get your hair set on fire, but then the acupuncturist explains that he’s going to do a little “cupping,” which I think was what my first boyfriend referred to as second base. It sounded totally inappropriate, and I started to protest, but turns out it’s just when a doctor sets fire to the alcohol in a small jar and then places it over the skin so it acts as a vacuum and gives you an enormous hickey. Which, now that I think about it, still sounds kind of inappropriate.