on pins and needles...

image from here
for a few months now i have had some serious issues with my right arm. this is my do everything arm. the arm that i make my living with. i've tried the other one, but it flops around semi helpfully and really i can only type a few keys and carry a dog leash with my south paw. this problem aka carpal tunnel bka i can't cut anything heavier than hair or china silk syndrome has waxed and waned for a few months depending on what i had been doing at work. somewhere down that road, the pain crept up and over into my left shoulder blade. this sucked. like really. no amount of yoga and stretching could work it out. and then i knew what i had to do. i turned to the mysterious art of acupuncture with an open yet healthily skeptical mind. the appointment was made and it came just in time, because that morning at work i started having crazy shoulder spasms while typing an email. i limped(bring on the melodrama) over to someone who i like to call my pusher man and begged a muscle relaxer. he dug around in his man purse and handed me a little something-something. oddly he popped into my work room about half an hour later just to make sure that i wasn't seeing paisleys or unicorns(what the hell else was in his pharmacopia i wondered).
wow, this story is long. but yesterday felt long. i was counting the minutes until my acupuncture appointment because even the muscle relaxer barely took the edge off my shoulder pain.
i would also like to offer a disclaimer here stating that i generally do not condone slipping into the valley of the dolls to take care of pain(real or imagined). i know i mentioned vicodin in an earlier post, but just try having a root canal with a hidden root. the recovery period is akin to having your head used as a jackhammer. but i digress.
i am sold on this acupunture thing. it is not as relaxing as a massage, but there is peacefulness that i felt while having little pokey things inserted up both arms and then in multiple areas of my shoulder blade. there was no pain. if i felt anything at all it was more like being poked with a pencil in two areas only. the other areas i could barely tell. i lay facedown on the table for about twenty minutes with the needles in place and a heat lamp warming my back. there were jungley-new age tunes(gorillas in the dawn of a new age mist???). i spaced out a little and felt some tingling and then before i knew it it was over. you don't feel the needles coming out.
i got dressed and wait a minute, where did my shoulder pain go? a light ache was still there but the intensity was ebbing. i have some chinese herbs(that kinda look like little blueberry candies or rabbit poop) to take to help with my circulation and i go back on monday for more.
we will also be working on clearing my allergies and revving my lady parts back up for pregnancy.
i can't wait.
unrelated: the mister and i are foraying into the world of home made hearty bread making this weekend. yum.