The diverse Life

Heal where it’s most painful

Have you had an injury but you just can’t pinpoint where the pain is? You know it hurts, but you just don’t know where it hurts. And if you don’t know where it hurts, you don’t know the source, and if you don’t know the source, you can’t fully heal the injury.

From my basketball days, I know sometimes that the source of the injury can be obscured by the lack of nerve endings. If you prick your finger, you’ll feel the pain immediately, and you know which finger was pricked without looking at it. We have plenty of nerve endings there. But if you sprain your ankle, the pain won’t be as sharp. The pain is an area. There is no pin-prick precision to it. There’s no X-marks-the-pain-spot. You struggle to find where exactly does it hurt.

A recent wrist injury was like that. I know it hurts my wrist, but i’m just not sure where on the wrist. And I didn’t try to test the wrist on where it hurts most, until I visited a doctor. The doctor basically twisted my palm around the wrist until he found out where it hurts most and started therapy based on that information. He was a doctor trained in both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the mainstream western medicine. For the purpose of the wrist, he used some physiotherapy techniques and some TCM.

The thing is, finding where it hurts most seemed like the most obvious solution to him, but my layman brain did not find it that obvious at all!

Whenever I’m down with sickness, I go to the doctors, and something is prescribed. I normally rotate among a TCM practitioner and a western doctor, without knowing the difference between the two. I was once told that TCM practitioner focus on the root of the problem, whereas a western doctor focuses on the symptoms. Although this could be true, to enhance the credibility of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I believe both systems try to find the root cause whenever they can, but just fail to find it on certain occasions, if not most occasions.

My most recent visit to the doctors due to stomach upset painted this picture vividly. The diagnosis process went like this:

“So, what’s wrong with you?”

I have diarrhea and vomitted several times.

“Any more symptoms?”

My stomach feels bloated.

“Ok, i’m going to give you some medicine for the diarrhea, nausea and the bloatedness.”

Ok…

And i realised i forgot to mention I was running with a temperature as well. I’ve let myself out of the door already. And the diarrhea just ran its course for another 2 weeks. I didn’t want to go back to the doctors. I just kept my faith that the body will heal on its own and kept to light diet - less oil, mostly rice porridge, for another 2 weeks before I started on normal food again.

In this instance, the doctor didn’t know how to heal where it’s most painful. The body however, knew.

© 2008 shang lee . com.