Jonah’s Blog

It’s pretty embarrassing, but I have nothing to bitch about right now. I was sick all week, but now I feel all right. My hand still hurts, but it’s getting better. I voted against Hillary Clinton last week in the primary.

I was all set to rail against Congress for raising the price of Sudafed, but it seems to have come back down to its normal levels, after the big Meth Scare of ’05. Last winter politicians in the bigger crystal meth states of the southwest pushed for higher prices on products that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, believing that meth dealers would actually go to the drug store and buy 100 packets of cold medicine to use in the manufacture of crystal meth.

But it seems things have calmed down, as I went to the store today and found Sudafed for less than $7. It had been as high as $12 to $14 last winter. Glad that’s over.

On another topic, some asshole reporter (actually a friend of mine named Jotham Sederstrom) told me yesterday I wasn’t a writer anymore, because I quit my newspaper job last year and crossed over to the dark side, as they say.

Looks like I wrote something today, Jotham. Published it too, ya’ jerk.

Since I hurt my hand in June I have not been able to play the banjo any more than once every couple weeks. Even that sets back the healing. So I’m at the point where I’ll try anything. About a month ago someone suggested acupuncture.

Some people swear by acupuncture. My sister says it cured her allergies. My cousin says it healed his injured back, and my friend’s mother got it for her dogs’ arthritis. She says it worked. My experience was less successful.

Because my problem is with my hand, the acupuncturist had to put needles in my hands and wrist. People are so sold by acupuncture’s curative powers and painlessness that they can’t believe having several needles in your hand for a half hour would hurt. It hurts. And my hand has been sore for several days after each treatment.

“It’s not supposed to hurt,” they say.

I answer, “The needles were on the tops of my hands between my fingers and in the joint where my palm meets my wrist.”

“I’m surprised it hurt, because it’s not supposed to.”

The pain, my terrible fear of needles seemed like things to be overcome if I wanted to experience the magical healing powers of China’s ancient medical arts. And the truth is that it did help my neck pain, though only for a few days.

Someone recommended a website that had the names and numbers of hundreds of acupuncturists all over the city, but the problem was that all of the people listed there were American. I wanted someone Chinese, so I found a place in Chinatown which had been recommended to me by a Korean woman from work.

The place was upstairs from an herbal medicine store and looked surprisingly like a doctor’s office. There was a desk in front of a small set of shelves holding files with colored labels. The walls were white, and though the lighting was dim, the waiting room was very clean.

A Chinese man with a thick accent and wearing a long white coat led me too a narrow stall, in a row of stalls. It had a small a small bed, like a massage table. I sat down and explained to him that I was a musician and demonstrated with a little air guitar. I showed him where it hurt. He bent my fingers around in several directions gently.

“Hurt?” he said.

I told him it didn’t. The guy’s English was not that great. As he put the needles into my hand he pointed to my wrist at the heel of my palm and said, “This one hurt.”

It did. He left me with three painful needles in my left hand for a half hour. At one point I heard someone from the other stall leaving.

“When I come next week should I see you or Joanne?” the patient asked.

“Yes,” my doctor said. “No problem.”

I decided I needed someone who spoke better English, so I found a place on the Upper West Side, also fully staffed with Chinese immigrants.

The doctor there put more needles in my hand, put a couple in my uninjured right hand, and lined them down my back, from the top of my head to my ankles. He was also treating some neck pain I get sitting all day at work.

He was tall and thin, very nice and reminded me of the Western-medicine Jewish doctor from the Midwest who treated me when I was growing up. His office was even more like a regular doctor’s office. The stalls were actually little rooms, with walls that reached the ceiling, pictures of families. In the rooms soothing Chinese classical music played over hidden speakers.

The first day he prescribed me a bottle of tiny, sweet-smelling pills labeled entirely in Chinese and instructed me to take 10 three times a day. He said they were good for tendon injuries, and charged me $16 for the bottle.

I left that day feeling like I had just done some heavy drugs. It was like I was floating down the street. So I went back the next week.

The second visit lacked the euphoria of the first, and I had begun to grow skeptical. I almost canceled the third visit. My intense fear of needles, coupled with the fact that one in three needles hurt bad going in made the whole experience like a game of Russian roulette. All it did was stress me out and make my hands sore for days.

After the third visit he “prescribed” two other little bead-shaped pills in bottles with Chinese labels. He told me that when the needles hurt me it was because my Chi was being blocked and that it had to be treated.

I asked him what the pills were for. He read the only English lettering on the label of the one bottle and said, “This one, Chinese Eight-Flavor pills.” It didn’t help much, and I was beginning to realize his English was no better than the guy in Chinatown.

“What about the other one?” I said.

“Oh, this one is for your fire,” he answered, making a fist in front of his chest. “For internal fire.”

At this point I was beginning to get the idea that the whole Chinese medicine thing is just as much religion as it is science, if not more so. So I paid the extra $20 for the pills and told him I would not be making any more appointments for the time being.

But I still take those damn pills three times daily. Ten of one, eight of the other two.