I Just Discovered I'm not CAN enough!

When I was about to graduate last summer, one of my classmates told me that I should check out Lisa’s articles in Acupuncture Today because if he knew anyone that should be doing a community acupuncture clinic, it would be me.

I hail from Youngstown OH. If you know anything about the steel industry, blue collar, union organizing, massive strikes & lay-offs and the first community buy-out of a steel mill…then you should know Youngstown. It is WAH-HUR-KIN CLASS!!!!

I will never forget Black Monday in 1977. Although, only 5 at the time, I understood by my parent’s expression while watching the news that evening, that we would not be running around the house that week. The impact of the steel mills shutting down that day is something that still defines me. Neighbors lost jobs and friend’s families were split as their fathers moved to Houston in search of work. The community came together to help each other. Till this day, it is still hard for me to explain what it was like to live in “murder city”. Later, when I went to college, I would listen as people talked about “diversity”. I knew that I had already lived it my whole life and did not feel the need to define it or analyze it. People whose lives lack it tend to be more compelled to talk about it.

I guess “community” is the same way for me. We lived “community”. I can’t tell you how many casseroles my mother baked for neighbors, how many times I got spanked by Mrs. Stanford, scolded by Mrs. Sanders or how many stamps I licked for Mrs. Story. We were just in and out of each other’s houses, because all we had was each other. With unemployment being three times higher than the national average, ranking 3rd in the country for murders per capita and constantly being shunned by the bourgeois burbs…you needed each other…White, Black, Puerto Rican, Italian, Vietnamese were not as important as the distinction of being from Youngstown. (we joked that we were all covered in soot so that you couldn’t tell what was under there anyway)

Why do I give you this history? I want you to know that I understand community. I understand poverty. I understand working my ass off. I understand the difference $5 can make. I understand being an underdog, a have-not, an outside shot, a poor prognosis. I don’t understand it in the cerebral sense, I understand it in my guts.

I decided to go to school for acupuncture because I saw it for its simplicity and sustainability (although at the time, I did not have that idealized word to assign to it). I could help the people that I identified with….although many are either long gone or incarcerated…there are faces I see in every city that remind me of them. So when Tony came to me with the info on WCA & I read Lisa’s writings…. I knew without hesitation that I was going to do a C.A. clinic.

So why is N.A.P. not a C.A.N. clinic?

The top end of our sliding scale is $45. It seems our clinic, at the moment, attracts a lot of middle class clients. At this time, this is who we need in order to exist. We are in a different boat than most of the people starting C.A…. all of us are fresh out of school and are still trying to digest the information we had shoved down our throats for the past 4 yrs. We still have to stop and come up with treatment plans. At the October conference, I believe I was the only one there who was a recent graduate. Everyone I had talked to had an average of 5 yrs out.

After 9 mos of practice, I am only now able to see an average of 2 patients/hr…that is if I even have that many signed up. I am seeing cases that school did not prepare me for. If I were to see more than 30 pts per week right now, I would not be helpful (unless they were straight up pain patients). I don’t want to give crappy acupuncture and I do not yet have the tools to go to 4-5 pts per week and still feel that I am giving a good treatment. I can’t wait to get to that stage, but I’m just not there yet.

It is rough right now. I am poorer now than when I was in school; however, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I love my patients and I love coming to the clinic. I feel right about what I am doing. Even if the majority of my patients are middle class, they are coming to me for a reason. This is who I’m supposed to be treating now, whether or not that was my plan.

Sure I feel a little shunned by C.A.N. I am disappointed that I am not considered C.A.N. because I have so much passion for it; but, I do agree with the Board’s decision to make these guidelines and I am happy to still participate in C.A.N. because I believe in it. I know its purpose is to help people like me! :>

Hopefully, it will only be a matter of months before we can get our name listed again on the clinic locator. If not, oh well! I still love the people involved and I still love C.A.N.