August, 2008

Back in June, I got a call from a freelance NPR reporter about doing a story for the show Marketplace about community acupuncture.

This is sort of a public service announcement...Skip and I just got back from a lovely visit with Korben and Ellen (and their families) in Philly, and I feel the need to draw some extra attention to the fact that Philadelphia Community Acupuncture needs to hire another acupuncturist pretty much immediately. All of PCA's shifts are full all the time, and their patients are starting to complain that they can't get appointments. In fact, we were all sitting together at a sidewalk cafe when a patient of Korben's walked by, said hello, and mentioned that he was having trouble getting an appointment. This is a stellar opportunity for a new acupuncturist to work with some wonderful colleagues and to be busy immediately -- as well as to live in a really cool, interesting, diverse neighborhood. Heck, if I didn't have other commitments, I would be applying for this job. Korben and Ellen have gotten a handful of responses to their job posting, but not enough to get the hiring process going.

This post is quite long.  I haven't blogged in awhile because I have been busy getting my clinic up and running.  I want to share my experience because it may help someone who is feeling overwhelmed and not quite ready to start their own huge clinic.

Lately I have taken to keeping a dream journal at home in the attempts to develop the skill of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is the awareness that one is dreaming while dreaming. It’s been a fun experiment. Keeping the journal gave me the idea to do it in clinic.

As CA practitioners, we place emphasis on the acupuncture, and we cannot, do not, will not offer the extras found in standard acu practices, simply because there isn't time for these things within our business model.  But we're health providers first and foremost, so I suspect that for most of us, our caring and compassion manage to shine through our brief consultations with our patients.

 Last year someone called to make an appointment. When she arrived, she said that she had no money, and lived in low-income housing.  I looked at her fashionably cut and colored hair and rolled my eyes.  I could smell that she was trying to get me to give her free or discounted treatments.  She didn't get them, but she signed on as a patient.  She has a horrendous list of complaints, and the list never seems to change much, especially since she only comes in once or twice a month.

In a surprising move that has bolstered the upstart community acupuncture movement, renowned Buddhist acupuncturist Jordan Van Toast has opened a community acupuncture clinic in Seattle, Washington. The grand opening of KommuniKi Kommunity Klinic (KKK) saw 100 residents of Seattle treated by the legendary Jordan himself, who was happy to announce the unveiling of a powerful new treatment.

Summer's been crazy.  Here's a video on my clinic that NBC televised last weekend; they stopped-in Saturday morning and aired it that night.  http://your4state.com/content/fulltext/?cid=26451  (Click on the "Watch" icon for video.)

My boys start school on Monday; I promise to post a real blog soon.  Happy end of summer to all...

"Habla Espanol/Do you speak Spanish"...I've been getting that question a lot lately.

 "Un poquito/A little bit"...my answer.

 A few days ago...someone called on the phone and started to talk in Spanish...somehow I convinced him to come in, that acupuncture would probably be helpful. Once he was here, I walked down the hall and grabbed Enrique in the Administration office of the Latino Community Center to translate some of the gentleman's concerns to me. But obviously, this method is unreliable. Getting some language software is on my list of things to do...they say just practicing 30 minutes a day over time builds fluency. I have used Rosetta Stone in the past and that is good.

I have been writing various blogs in my head the past two months, this time I will try to actually get one down on “paper”. It starts with my end of summer wish list:
1) Everyone who can reads Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. It connected the dots for me between nearly every major political upheaval since the 1970’s and a bunch of neocon economists funded by multinational corporations. I didn’t find it depressing – it is much less depressing for me to understand exactly what is going on than not to understand. If you need a hope antidote, follow it with “Blessed Unrest” or “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, both recommended elsewhere on CAN.
2) All the clinics that have been up and running a year or more blog in about how it’s all going. Details are great, not just numbers, but how you feel about your job.
I’ll start:

I’m a member of the Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Society of Massachusetts(AOMSM).  Recently, a “subcommitteeof insurance” was formed by someone who is very in favor of attempting to getacupuncture covered by insurance. Currently, as some of you may know, Massachusetts requires all residentsto have health insurance – those without face tax penalties.  Putting aside the thought that thelikelihood of this is probably quite slim, I think it’s still a valuablediscussion. 

The person who started the subcommittee put the following post up in the forum:

Following the implementation in February 2008 of in-store health clinics in Atlanta, Little Rock and Dallas under “The Clinic at Wal-Mart” brand, Wal-Mart now has its sights set on the holistic health market with the opening of Wal-Mart Community Acupuncture clinics in several major urban centers across America by years end. Wal-Mart Senior Vice President and president, health and wellness Dr. John Agwaunobi said, “Chinese medicine and pharmacology are a great treasure house and efforts should be made to increase both access and affordability, which seem to go hand in hand.”

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said. 'Lord, I
would like to know what  Heaven and Hell are like.

The Lord led the holy man to two doors.

He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room
was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew,
which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water. The people sitting
around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were
holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms and each
found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. But because
the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into
their mouths. The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.

The Lord said, 'You have seen Hell.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27769977@N08/?deleted=2765036303

Two years ago, when I told my patients of my plans to convert the practice to a CAP, they surprised me that month by scheduling more visits than ever, at the old price.  It only lasted a month, but told me that they were expressing their trust in me, once they realized that I really cared about them getting well.

Cannabustion, the direct burning of cannabis sativa on the skin for therapeutic effect, is being touted as a new and powerfully effective treatment modality capable of treating a variety of health conditions, says the director of acupuncture research and development at Misty Mind Acupuncture College, Paul "Don't" Wakeham. The technique is believed to be as powerful as traditional moxabustion, which uses mugwart in various degrees of purity. "Cannibustion is similar to moxabustion in that regard." said Wakeham from his office at the college in Eugene, Oregon. "You can use some really killer shit or some reg's. It depends what you are trying to do...and how much cash the customer has. Not to mention that sometimes all you have is schwag and that will have to do because it's better than nothing, I guess."

Changing habits is one of the most difficult things we try to do. We seem to have a default setting that takes us back into the groove, regardless of the habit or how much we want to change.  Smoking, eating things that we know aren’t promoting our weight or health goals, negative thinking, being too crabby to those we care about, etc. We all have habits we’d just as soon change.  And we’ve all failed at changing them.

One of the aspects of oriental medicine that I like is its empirical nature; performing a treatment and observing the results. It makes me happy when I have to push myself to think outside the standard textbook treatments when the results aren’t what I would expect. It never fails to amaze me how a minor shift in strategy can make all the difference in the world to the treatment outcome. This is not to say that oriental medicine does not have its share of certainties and logic that work, but working with the flexibility that acupuncture allows is sure fun. The other side of this empirical coin seems to be the proliferation of ideas that are patently not true. Some things don’t work, but the information seems to keep moving around anyway either because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy, or validates how we want things to be.

Babies & dogs; what can we learn from them? To live in the moment.  It’s a hard thing to do, living only moment to moment and being fully present. I am learning, as a new mom, that you have to be present and in the moment because there isn’t time to be anywhere else.  I am also learning how important it is to embrace and appreciate each second of every day because as we all know, life can change in an instant.  And so....

This past weekend I took a whole weekend off for the first time since opening my clinic, went to the woods for some camping and had some time to think about how good it is to be a community acupuncturist. Here are (just) 10 things I love about it:

10) Feeling good about what I do each day - being able to help people and having no guilt whatsoever about what they are going to have to pay for it because I offer a sliding scale

9) Being able to suggest to patients who need it that they come frequently and having no problem telling them this - I allow people to come as often as they need to in order to get better.

8) Being able to offer acupuncture to people who otherwise would never try it or receive it regularly simply due to the cost.

7) Treating a bunch of people at the same time - not only is it efficient and effective, it's FUN - much more so than one-on-one, in my opinion

I had a boutique Japanese acupuncture practice in Columbia Missouri for six years where I saw one patient at a time.  I used to talk to my patients quite a lot, listen to them, give them advice when they asked for it, and they would occasionally invite me to a party or become a friend.  This was all well and good, but sometimes I would wonder why I often felt so drained at the end of the day.  I found that I needed quite a lot of down time to be alone to recover my energy on the weekend to get ready for the next week.  I would take walks, read novels and watch movies.  How hard could it be, I asked myself, to see patients and treat them with acupuncture and moxa?  It shouldn't be that hard, I thought, besides most of my patients are nice and I like listening to them.

Stretch. Crack my knuckles to prepare them for some serious typing. Exhale. Here comes my blog entry for the month. Scratch my head -- what the Hell do I have to write about?

Ever since my last post announcing my licensing, I've been a dried-up well when it comes time to post a new blog entry. Upon receiving the peice of paper from the California Acupuncture Board, I've been in soak-it-up-and-learn-mode, and I haven't had time for opinions or insights. Well, that has recently changed, so watch out -- here's a blog-thingy from moi.

First, the announcement: WE HAVE A SPACE!!!

("we" = Circle Community Acupuncture, in San Francisco)

That's right, after months of looking, rejecting, being lied to, being rejected, etc we signed a lease. We have 1100 sqft of empty space that we a frantically racing around to fill up and prepare for a September opening. We got our first Lafuma today -- $45 on Craigslist!

“Hey, Keith, we have a bit of a water problem in the back of the treatment room”, Larry whispers calmly, as I pause, catch my breath, and try to figure out who’s next on the list to be treated. Somewhere deep down in the recesses of my mind is the old “oh sh*** you better do something” voice whispering. Somewhere else in there was the little gnome of reason calmly telling my “oh sh**” voice to chill out. “Just grab those extra blankets in back and use them,” I think I said to him. Larry heads to the back of the room, forever cool as the proverbial cucumber.

Does anyone hear remember being in high school and wanting desperately to be accepted, if not by adults and teachers, at least by one's peers. It's difficult to shake ourselves free of mental cobwebs of the past, but essential if we wish to move through the world without living inside the cramped box of old programming.

I don't usually cross paths with acupuncturists that I went to school with. Yesterday and today I bumped into two - neither of whom I knew particularly well, but since we share a common path - acupuncture/holistic medicine - I quite naturally reached out to my fellow professionals in a friendly effort to acknowledge our common community.

The link to the Newsweek article that shows the widening gap between those w/ health-care   and those who don't.   Gov. Kaine of VA says "2/3 of the 46 million uninsured in the U.S. have jobs but can't afford health insurance."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/150846/page/1

Facial Rejuvenation Without Borders (FRWB) recently completed a two-week relief campaign for enemy combatants detained at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Group founder and spokesperson, Emily Shelton, described the visit as a “great success” and hopes to return there in the near future. Speaking from her summer home in Berkeley, California, she said, “Since these guys aren’t going anywhere soon, it would be good for us to go back once a year indefinitely.”

First off, I want to apologize for not keeping up with my blogging obligations in the last few months. I have been a bit pre-occupied since we opened our clinic, Sarana Community Acupuncture in March of this year. I will attempt to be more consistent.

Skip’s “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/blog/chickens-coming-home-roo... post got me thinking about the whole acupuncture school issue. I wonder how the market correction he is referring to will change the acu schools. I wonder if many of them will just close doors or get creative and re-invent themselves. I hope it is the latter and I have some ideas about what a great acupuncture school could be that I
will share in this posting.